A Litany of Confession and Lament: Stop AAPI Hate
Our church created this litany of confession and lament that we’ll be using this Sunday (3.21.21). Feel free to utilize this Litany with your own church community, adapting it as you need for your own context..
Too many times over the course of our nearly three year existence as a church, we have been called together in unity and in love to denounce hatred and an insidious form of white supremacy that is present and active within our culture and given safe harbor within white evangelicalism.
Too many times we have gathered together to lament, to weep, and to mourn with those who mourn. And today is no different. This past week a white, Christian, evangelical pastors son—a 21-year old adult—unleashed a wave of terror upon the Asian community in Georgia and around the country. His evil actions robbed the life and the humanity of his victims.
This evil must stop. It must be eradicated from within the church. The systems and structures that foment this hatred, enabled by our silence, it must be dismantled. We must speak, and we must act. Our silence is not an option; it allows this evil to run unabated within our ranks.
This was not an isolated incident, this was not a blip on the radar. Rather this is a systemic issue that has continued to roam free within the white church in the United States for centuries now. And we must stand up, and confess our complicity and stand in lament with our siblings who are both fearful and hurting.
Today, we are pausing to do just that.
I want to offer a litany for us to participate in; a litany of confession and lament. There will be words on the screen below for you to verbally proclaim as a confession. Let us together lament and confess so that we may move forward towards ending this evil scourge among us.
Let us pray.
LEAD: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
ALL: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
LEAD: 3,800 reported acts of hatred have been inflicted upon Asians in the United States in the past year. 70% against Asian women.
ALL: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
LEAD: More than 400 acts of physical violence and harm have been inflicted against Asians in the past year. Not a single day goes by where there is not at least 1 act of violence perpetrated against an Asian brother, sister, grandmother, aunt, or niece.
ALL: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
LEAD: For the 8 families in Atlanta crushed by the scourge of racism, violence, hatred, and white supremacy; for the 8 families who have lost their daughters, their friends, their neighbors, their family to hate
ALL: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
LEAD: For the Asian churches here in Seattle that have been repeatedly targeted with acts of hatred, may you grant them peace, and protection, keep them safe from harm and hatred, we pray
ALL: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
LEAD: For our brothers and sisters who have been marked by racial trauma, who are justly filled with fear and a holy anger
ALL: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy.
LEAD: For the insidious evil that is white supremacy and white Christian nationalism that have always been present within our country and continues unabated: Lord, come quickly. We pray for your swift hand of justice, for reparation, and for repentance.
ALL: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
LEAD: For our own individual and collective complicity in the systems of oppression that allow for the sin of racism and white supremacy to run rampant leaving a trail of destruction, pain, and trauma in its wake; for our silence, our inaction, and our apathy in the face of hatred and evil, we confess.
ALL: Lord, forgive us.
LEAD: Lord, deliver us from this scourge.
ALL: Lord, deliver us.
LEAD: Give us eyes to see what we unconsciously create. Give us ears to hear the pain we inadvertently inflict. Give us hands to reach out and hold our brothers and sisters who are in pain. Give us feet to move, to march against the tide
ALL: Grant us this, Lord we pray.
LEAD: May your Spirit flood our being with renewal, may your Spirit flood our systems with renewal, may your Spirit flood this world with renewal, may your kingdom come!
ALL: May your kingdom come.
LEAD: May your kingdom come.
ALL: May your kingdom come, both now and forevermore.
LEAD: Amen
ALL: Amen.