By Kathy L. Gilbert
July 23, 2020 | UM News
As a young man, the Rev. James Lawson was chosen by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to train young civil rights peacemakers to fight racism with love and respect — to step into the fray and say, “I follow Jesus.”
“That was a powerful mantra that I learned in the Methodist Youth Movement in the ’40s and ’50s,” said Lawson, a United Methodist elder who is now 91.
Lawson’s life work has been to create a nonviolent nation.
He said some historians call the civil rights movement a Black church movement because the Black church was the only place where members of the movement could meet safely.
“Many of the mass meetings were a modification of a worship service, a religious meeting,” he said.
Watching the Black Lives Matter campaign today, Lawson said this movement is the most important nonviolent campaign since the movement in the 1960s that he and the late John Lewis and C.T. Vivian helped lead.
“As a student of nonviolence and history, this past spring I have said the 21st century has a chance to have movements like this one. To be far larger and more dynamic than anything we did in 20th century.”