Black Lives Matter Is a Deeply Christian Claim
Growing up in a Tennessee parish once threatened by the Ku Klux Klan shaped my understanding of faith, race, and Christian moral responsibility.
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Several years ago, I received an email from a woman who had seen me on Fox News discussing faith and race.
I had said on-air that “black lives matter” is a deeply Christian claim.
She wrote that while she appreciated much of what I said, she thought my stance contradicted Jesus’s teachings that all lives matter. Her question gave me pause — and an opening for an important dialogue.
I answered by sharing a lesson I learned in high school. During a church retreat on the Beatitudes, I remember grumbling to my youth minister, Bob Carney, that it felt unfair Jesus only named certain groups as “blessed.”
Blessed are the poor, the meek, the persecuted — shouldn’t everyone be blessed? Bob’s reply stays with me to this day. Yes, God loves everyone, but Jesus has a preferential love for those who are marginalized, excluded, and suffering injustice.
He singles out the downtrodden not to deny others’ worth, but to underline the worth of those whom the world treats as worthless.
In Jesus, God turns the world upside down so that the last become first. In a society where black lives, immigrant lives, and refugee lives are too often pushed to last place, proclaiming that black lives matter is not a negation of anyone else’s dignity — it’s a necessary affirmation of those whom our sinful world consistently undervalues.
I’m convinced that if Jesus Christ walked the earth today, he most certainly would say “black lives matter.” After all, he was the one who taught, “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are those who mourn,” naming the very people who most needed to hear that blessing.
My conviction on this point isn’t just theoretical. I grew up Catholic in the American South, in a diocese with a proud history of fighting for African Americans’ dignity during the Civil Rights era.
That history set the foundation for my faith.
