📝 From the Pastor’s Desk

Why We Must Keep Telling the Truth

Holy Covenant,

I started drafting my newsletter article for this week on Juneteenth, a day when we remember the delayed freedom of enslaved people in Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth reminds us that justice is rarely handed down freely; but more often it must be fought for and demanded, especially when systems of power resist giving it. It’s a holiday that calls us to celebrate freedom while also reckoning with the painful truths of our country’s history, truths that have often been censored or silenced.

This Sunday, June 22, Holy Covenant UCC will be hosting a screening of the PBS documentary American Coup: Wilmington 1898. If you haven’t heard of the Wilmington massacre, you’re not alone. It’s the only successful coup in U.S. history, where a violent overthrow of a democratically elected, multiracial government by white supremacists in North Carolina occurred. It’s a story of American history that’s been buried and rarely discussed for over a century. And it is a story that feels especially urgent today.

“We are living in a time when we’re seeing democracy undermined. Not by secret plots, but often in plain sight.”

Just last week…

Peace and Blessings,

Rev. Christopher Czarnecki

Senior Pastor, Holy Covenant UCC

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Let’s lift up Pastor Chris’s voice — and continue living our bold faith, everywhere. Subscribe to his Substack blog.🕊️