Rome (NEV), June 5, 2020 – The Standing Committee of the Action for the Methodist Evangelical Churches in Italy (OPCEMI) issued a statement on May 29, about the George Floyd’s case.
OPCEMI “expresses its full proximity and support for the US sister churches which, in these hours, raise their voices denouncing the barbaric murder of George Floyd, which took place in Minneapolis on May 25th at the hands of a police officer: yet another crime resulting from racial hatred, prejudice and discrimination – reads the statement -. If in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the complete equality of every human being is proclaimed in the social context and on the basis of rights, we reaffirm, with the strength of our faith, that in Christ we are all one”.
The Methodist Committee refers directly to the Bible: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28), and affirms that “racism is a sin” and that “women and men all have the same descent, since ‘from one men he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth” (Acts 17:26).
Furthermore, the Methodists argue, “contempt for the human being is contrary to the teaching of God, given that “the only fruitful relationship with men is love, that is, the will to maintain communion with them. God did not despise men, but made himself man for their sake”, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in ‘Resistance and surrender. Letters and writings from prison’.
, June 5, 2020 - The Standing Committee of the Action for the Methodist Evangelical Churches in Italy (OPCEMI) issued a statement){kind=link}