Edler G. Hawkins speech, 1964.

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    us, thy children. Our faces dark with doubt are made a
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    mockery in thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front
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    thy Heaven, O God. Crying we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.
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    Surely thou too art not quite, Lord, a pale, bloodless
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    heartless thing, with which calls great
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    God for thy silence is quite terror
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    to our hearts.
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    What the mood of the Negro is saying
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    now almost sixty years after his
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    early terror, As it happens again in Birmingham New York Chicago.
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    or any place,
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    is that for the church not to speak, and not to act
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    leaves a silence that is terror to the hearts of those
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    of us, who being Negroes, were yet born into the life of the church,
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    and will die in it. And one hopes, we might add, die for it.
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    If it means agonizing to find the money
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    to speak and act and to enlist the staff to serve,
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    if it means bringing the church to the place where it accepts whatever cross
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    it is called upon to bear. So let it be.
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    It may be that the only way we can keep from striking terror
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    in the heart of our whole world is to become what we really ought to
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    be: a church that enters the world where its obedience is
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    and does it, even if it has to do it in terms of it suffering.
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    And if we're able, ever able to say, "We have overcome,"
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    It will only be because, as a church, we are willing to act, speak,
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    and maybe suffer in the areas of race, in the certain knowledge that
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    in the fulfillment of the American dream for all people, we have rendered
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    our obedience to God in
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    this, our day. And for the Church so to speak
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    and so to act and so to suffer
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    is to believe that in the personal relationships of love
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    and brotherhood and justice,
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    we touch not only what ought to be but even more
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    what is the deepest truth about the God of Jesus Christ from whom
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    we have said nothing can separate us. Neither principalities
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    nor powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor any other creature.
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    For this is the very ground of our faith.
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    We submit this for your prayerful consideration
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    in the hope that if it meets your acceptance.
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    We shall inch some steps further towards that love that died for us
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    and in which we
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    are still
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    kept

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