Remarks delivered at the NC Justice Center’s 2017 Defenders of Justice Awards where the Council was recognized for Grassroots Empowerment. In 1960 Terry Sanford ran for Governor of NC. By all accounts, he should not have won. He was not as well-known as his opponent and he consistently mentioned raising taxes. But he did win because he convinced people across NC that their tax dollars would be used to benefit everyone in the state and especially used to empower through education. At one time — some of us in the…
Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director
2017 Stand Up Sabbath — June 16-18
About this time two years ago, I accepted the offer to become the next Executive Director of the NC Council of Churches. We agreed that I would spend two weeks with the outgoing ED in June learning the ropes, and then I would really get to work in August. My first day in the office was June 18, 2015. I had heard the news from Charleston that morning when I woke and I knew that event would forever define my first day at the office. The NC Council of Churches…
Special Interest Altar Calls
By now, most of us have read “Dark Money” or heard enough about the subject it explores to recognize that money is suffocating our democracy. Add to this styptic environment a potential new infusion of money, this time through the tax-free political contributions that could flow directly into nonprofit organizations and communities of faith across the country. The alarm bells went off in February at the National Prayer Breakfast when we heard the President promise to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of…
Shepherds of Creation
Sermon preached on May 7, 2017 at Church of the Nativity, Raleigh. When I was in kindergarten, we memorized the 23rd Psalm. Of course, it was the King James Version, so different from what we read here today since we’ve all moved on to the modern translations that change so often we can’t keep up our memorization habits. Still, after all these years since kindergarten, I think if I had to do it, I could recite the 23rd Psalm for you in the King James Version. I also still recall…
Workers’ Memorial: Remembering Those Who Have Died
Remarks delivered at the Workers’ Memorial, April 28, at the Old Capitol Building, Raleigh Micah 7:1-4, 6:8 God has always had a preferential option for the marginalized and the down trodden of society, while also holding out hope that the dominant and powerful will see justice the way God sees it. Sometimes people in charge don’t see the injustice occurring to those who work beneath them; sometimes they don’t understand it when it happens; and sometimes they know exactly what they’re doing, but they do it anyway because they are…
Guns on Campus Are a Bad Idea
Two of the most volatile elements on a college campus are alcohol and hormones. These ingredients contribute to sexual assault (23.1 percent of female and 5.4 percent of male undergraduates), property destruction (50 percent of college administrators from schools with high drinking levels say their campuses have a problem with alcohol-related property damage), and poor academic performance (25 percent of college students report missing class and doing poorly on exams or papers related to alcohol consumption). Most students survive all three of these, though sexual assault brings its own kind…
No More of This
In the final hours of the first day of the Triduum, these intense three days when Christians rehearse the events between Maundy Thursday and the Easter Vigil, the juxtaposition of bombs in Afghanistan and swords in Gethsemane boggles the mind. In Gethsemane when they came out with swords and clubs to arrest Jesus and someone with him took out a sword and “struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear,” Jesus declared, “‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him” (Luke…
A Day in the Life of….
Preached on April 12 at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, Chapel Hill Holy Week, this week, is the most intense week of the Christian year. The secular world might say, looking at us, that the week leading up to Christmas Day is the most intense because they see us scurrying around searching for the perfect last minute gift. Or more likely the gift we forgot to buy because we didn’t know we’d be getting a gift from a friend at the office or an out-of-town relative who just showed…
NC Council of Churches to be Recognized as a Defender of Justice
Jesus mentions when discussing faith-based activity, “Do not sound a trumpet before you…so that [you] might be praised” (Matthew 6:2) and advises that those who work toward the Reign of God do so regardless of reward. More often than not, that’s exactly what we do here at the NC Council of Churches, but this week is different. This week we learned that the North Carolina Justice Center has selected us to receive their Defender of Justice Award for Grassroots Empowerment. We are honored and humbled to be in the fine…
Standing on Our Heads
Sermon preached by the Rev. Jennifer Copeland on April 1, 2017 at First United Methodist Church, Mocksville for the Western North Carolina Conference United Methodist Women’s Legislative Day. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the…
Do the Goose
If you think organized religion has lost its appeal (25% of Americans do; most of them under 40), then it might be time to look again. Look at the Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, NC, July 13-16, 2017. Rooted in the Christian tradition, Wild Goose is an amalgamation of spirit, justice, music and arts. Remember how Jesus combined a radical interpretation of justice with a reverence for tradition? He said things like, “I have come not to abolish [the law] but to fulfill.” Then he showed us what fulfillment…
Women and Wages
Remarks delivered by Executive Director Jennifer Copeland at a press conference on fair wages on March 8, 2017. Today is a day without women. Across the world women have been encouraged not to labor, whether for pay or not for pay. We are taking the day off, all on the same day, to demonstrate how much of what happens in the world happens because of women. Several schools have canceled classes because they know their schools cannot function without its women. Good for them, but the truth is, the world…
Let Loving One Another Become Our Norm
Yesterday morning, the Sandra P. Lerner Jewish Community Day School in Durham received a bomb threat. This was the most recent in recurring waves of bomb threats against Jewish centers over the past two months—69 bomb threats at 54 Jewish community centers in 27 states and a Canadian province, according to the Jewish Community Center Association of North America. That’s a lot of disruption and a lot of fear, which is exactly what the cowards who make such threats are trying to affect. As it turns out, I know a…
Repealing the Johnson Amendment Means Pulpits for Sale
Remarks delivered by Executive Director Jennifer Copeland at HKonJ 2017. Picture this on the marquee in front of your favorite house of worship: Pulpit for Sale! For the right price I will support the Republican candidate for office, but bring me more money next week and I’ll support the Democrat. Perhaps with enough financial incentive, I’ll preach a sermon for the Communist. Makes no difference, it’s all about the money. If the Johnson amendment is repealed, a promise made just weeks ago by the one who is now President, faith…
Speak Against Vitriol; Stand for Values
For more than 80 years the NC Council of Churches has stood for essential human rights and common decency grounded in the Gospel imperative to “love God and love neighbor.” We started with the issue of racial equality in 1935 and forthrightly moved into “migrant labor” and immigration, women’s right, the environment, and health care. Anyone watching the news this week has witnessed the steady unraveling of each of these causes and more. The unraveling goes far beyond taking apart the initiatives of the most recent executive administration; we are…