Let My People Go

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go!” - Exodus 10:3

The people of Israel had been enslaved and worked to the bone and treated ruthlessly. They’d cried out to God, and God was in the process of answering. God sent Moses to face off with Pharaoh and to demand change, to demand freedom.

Listen in as these two spiritual leaders - both pastors in America - as they stand up to the system of White supremacy in our land and demanded freedom:

This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.

- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

The gospel of liberation is bad news to all oppressors, because they have defined their “freedom” in terms of the slavery of others… The gospel will always be an offense to the rich and the powerful, because it is the death of their riches and power. 

- James Cone, God of the Oppressed

What feelings are aroused in you as you read these words? What hopes? What fears? What role might you have in either raising your voice to demand freedom or in laying down power yourself?