My Withdrawal From United Pastors In Mission

Rev. Dr. Napoleon Harris, V

Antioch has been a founding member of United Pastors In Mission (UPM) since its inception. As a native of Cleveland, son of a Cleveland pastor, raised in the Cleveland Baptist Church community, I too have been affiliated- indeed raised in and by the constitutes of UPM. However, recent events have compelled me to reevaluate my personal ongoing partnership with the organization.

The catalyst was a press conference called to address “community grief” over the death of Charlie Kirk, to “pray and show support” for his family, and asking churches to “dedicate their services to pray for Charlie and his family.” This unilateral decision, made without consultation of the broader membership, prompted my response in the essay entitled “Pointless Prayers” (included in full below) that I sent to the UPM leadership in hopes of conversation and a cessation of the press conference.

Pointless Prayers

The United Pastors of Ohio’s decision to hold a prayer rally for Charlie Kirk’s family represents a profound betrayal of the Black church’s foundational principles. This press conference was a unilateral action- a callous decision made without consultation or consideration of the broader membership or its moral implications. It exemplifies the kind of tone-deaf leadership that has contributed to record-breaking low turnouts at both ballot boxes and houses of worship. The parallel is undeniable and painful.

I am incensed. This is disgraceful, disgusting, and fundamentally lacking in Christian character and compassion. We are being asked to gather in prayer for a white supremacist’s family while these same religious leaders have maintained deafening silence about countless other tragedies that should have commanded their pastoral attention.

Where was this unified call to prayer for young Black men found with nooses around their necks in Mississippi? Where was the community-wide worship service for children sacrificed on the altar of the Second Amendment? Where was the community call to prayer as antisemitism climbed to nauseating levels? Did UPM organize press conferences for HBCU students facing threats of violence? Have these pastors dedicated Sunday services to praying for victims of gun violence here in Cleveland? I know they haven’t- because a delegation of pastors working with mothers who’ve lost children to gun violence asked them directly. The response? Crickets.

This appears to be either a publicity stunt or an appeal to become chaplains to complacency’s cruelty. This is performative prayer, political theater- nothing more. Suddenly UPM wants to pray? Where is UPM’s pastoral response to the hundreds of thousands killed in what the United Nations has deemed a genocide in Gaza? Where is UPM’s outrage over families torn apart by deportation policies in our own backyard, or their own parishioners losing Medicaid coverage?

UPM’s silence on matters impacting our communities has been deafening. Yet for a man who built his career on white supremacist rhetoric, gaslighting college students, and divisive politics, suddenly UPM stands up to roar like a lion, insisting we need community-wide prayer and reverence!

This press release represents everything wrong with top-down religious leadership operating without accountability to the communities it serves. UPM leadership made this decision unilaterally, without consulting their membership or cabinets, without considering how this selective compassion appears to a community already skeptical of religious institutions, without regard for the message it sends about whose lives they deem worthy of collective mourning, and without even considering God’s will, love, or the Bible.

There’s a viral video of a young boy who stood up in church and declared, “I’m sick of this church!” Well, I’m sick of UPM’s version of “church” too. I’m sick of a Christianity that wears crosses but lacks the conviction to bear one. I’m sick of respectability-chasing reverends making the choice to extend public grace and co-sign national expenditures of resources and honor to someone who actively worked to harm the very communities we serve.

I’m sick of it because it is antithetical to the gospel! This selective mourning, this careful curation of which families deserve our prayers, this willingness to organize for those who opposed justice while ignoring the suffering of the vulnerable- this hypocrisy and dedication to whiteness is precisely why my generation has lost trust in the Black church.

Charlie Kirk made his choices. His family profited from those choices, building wealth and platform off rhetoric that dehumanized Black and brown people, attacked immigrants, and undermined democracy itself. While I don’t condone political violence against anyone, I do respect choices, and I choose to refuse participation in a Christianity that would organize community-wide prayer rallies for him while consistently ignoring the heroes of actual justice and liberation.

Would these same pastors have organized press conferences and community prayer services for Medgar Evers when he was assassinated? For Dr. King when he was gunned down? History suggests they would have found reasons to stay silent, to avoid being “too political,” to maintain their respectability-to say “now is not the time.”

This decision reeks of a “Christianity” that preaches about Jesus’ cross but lacks the conviction to live the revolutionary life of liberating compassion that guarantees a rendezvous with one, a faith more concerned with appearing reasonable to power than with standing with the powerless. Count me out!

Instead, give me the old-time religion our enslaved ancestors chose in the brush harbors when they were denied their humanity everywhere else. Give me the faith that sustained them through unspeakable horrors because it was grounded in liberation, the recognition that God sides with the oppressed, and the understanding that the gospel demands we comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Give me the Christianity that does justice- not one that talks about it as an abstract concept or future goal, but one that lives it, breathes it, and pursues it every single day. Give me the faith that loves mercy-not one that demands alignment and emotional investment in a soulless empire that crushes the vulnerable. Give me the church that walks humbly with God, recognizing the Imago Dei (image of God) in everyone, especially those this and other wrongdoing groups consistently overlook.

UPM had options. They could have remained silent, which would have been the humane and moral choice. They could have issued a general statement about praying for all families affected by violence without singling out one family for special treatment. They could have upheld the sanctity of prayer and not emptied it of its holiness by reducing it to political pandering. Instead, they chose to make a statement with their selective compassion, and that statement rings loud and clear: some lives matter more than others, some families deserve our prayers more than others, some suffering is worthy of community-wide attention while other suffering can be safely ignored.

This is not Christianity. This is not the gospel that set captives free. This is not the faith that sustained our people through centuries of struggle and built movements that changed the world.

It’s time for the Black church to remember who we are and whose we are. UPM desperately needs to find the moral courage to stand consistently with the oppressed rather than compromisingly with the oppressor, to practice the faith our ancestors knew, to recognize God in all people, including the least of these, and refuse to look away from anything that hurts anyone.

UPM needs the old-time religion that doesn’t ask us to pray for white supremacists while ignoring Black children, doesn’t organize press conferences for those who built careers on hate and gun apologetics while staying silent about genocide, doesn’t demand we extend grace to the powerful while withholding it from the powerless.

Real religion is about faith, liberating, justice-seeking faith, the faith that sees clearly and acts boldly. That faith is still available to those with eyes to see and hearts to receive it. But it won’t be found at UPM’s prayer rally. Stay vigilant, friends. We are living in evil times, but we are also witnessing the final gasps of a dying regime. The good God intends is inevitable!

The Response

Upon receiving my essay, the UPM President claimed the press conference press release was sent out “in error” by a staff member-without their review. However, they refused to apologize for the frustration and hurt caused by this “error” and declined to discuss the matter in our next scheduled meeting, even when the meeting was held under the premise that we would do so. Sadly, even when the matter was directly asked- there was no discussion of the matter, we were told we were not bringing the matter up. The leadership of the UPM may not have wanted to discuss the matter, but it warranted discussion- even further action, because numerous community members, clergy, and Antioch parishioners have seen the press release and raised serious concerns and inquiries. In truth, I have been inundated with calls and frustrated, even furious, responses at every turn: in hospitals, boardrooms, and even at social events. The angst and disappointment from the press release have struck an intergenerational cord of disdain from clergy ranging from seasoned sages to current colleagues in the gospel vineyard both here in Cleveland and abroad. Beloved, it is bad when non-Black parishioners are asking “what’s wrong with the Black pastors in Cleveland?”

This brings me to my decision: despite my strong sentiments, I will not unilaterally remove Antioch’s membership or association with United Pastors In Mission. I recognize our longstanding association with and leadership in UPM. However, my Christian convictions no longer allow me to associate with this-or any- group that upholds ideologies actively working against God’s gospel intentions for the world. To remain silent about all that is happening in our world is wrong. To be loud about someone who championed that wrong, and to insist that we turn the Lord’s Day into a prayer vigil for that person, is sinful. God’s people simply do not celebrate evil. We rejoice instead in the activity of God (see Exodus 15).

I am and will remain optimistic that change will come for our nation and for UPM. But until that change occurs within UPM, in lieu of attending UPM meetings, I will be found in prayer, study, and exercise. Moreover, any lover of Jesus and justice is more than welcome to join me in prayer, study, and exercise at either the Warrensville or Downtown YMCA on Tuesday mornings at 10AM. Health is wealth- spiritual, mental, and physical health are the triune of wholeness holiness calls us to.

All heaven’s best,