After announcing their " Fasting From Whiteness " for the Lenten season, a Christian church in Oak Park, Illinois, is in hot water. According to Religion News (RNS), the issue sparked so much controversy causing the church’s website to crash.
The First United Church in Oak Park put up a banner on the church ground that said “Fasting From Whiteness.” According to the banner, the church plans on setting aside racism for the lent.
Along with the church schedule for lent, the banner also stated that the church would “build our worship life around the voices of Black people, indigenous people, and people of color” this Lent.
Far-right conservative news outlets quickly picked up the church’s banner. Turning Point USA, a far-right conservative organization, posted a video showing a reporter sizing up the church’s banner. “Excuse me, what?!” the reporter on the video reacted.
“In this case, they have decided to separate the White culture from those around it. We want to be creating unity instead of creating a lot of disunity by separating people based on the color of their skin,” TP USA’s reporter said.
The video was quickly picked up by far-right conservating news outlets, including the New York Post, and was featured on Fox and Friends.
The church’s senior pastor, Rev. John Edgerton, said they “began receiving about five voicemail messages a minute” after being featured on Fox News.
Edgerton, who created the program himself, said it is “crucially important for predominantly white churches to take up this work.” “In the United States, our voice is the majority voice, and our message is the one that is always going to get a hearing,” he said.
Edgerton claims that bringing the voices and faces of non-white Christians is “in keeping with the reality of the global majority of Christians in the church.”
“You don’t fast from things that are despicable; you fast from those things that tug at your heart,” Edgerton added.
The church released an official statement on its website with unexpected media attention. “Some people are questioning the message of the church’s Lenten theme,” it reads.
“In practice with the Lenten spiritual discipline of fasting, we intended to lay aside our usual frames of reference and open ourselves to hearing the Gospel message through the voices of Black People, Indigenous People, and People of Color,” the statement explained.
