“While you may have had many black pastors and clergy who may have shown up at events, and you may have had a lot of people from black churches who were at these marches and protests, from 2014 to the present, by and large, this has not been a theological movement,” said Watson Jones III, the senior pastor of Compassion Baptist Church in Chicago.

Watson Jones III: One of the things that has been sort of interesting to me, that is different from every major movement for black justice in America, is that the black church is not at the forefront of this.

While you may have had many black pastors and clergy who may have shown up at events, and you may have had a lot of people from black churches who were at these marches and protests, from 2014 to the present, by and large, this has not been a theological movement.

And in Dr. King’s day, during the civil rights movement, there were many black churches who were vehemently against Dr. King, Gardner Taylor, and others, and didn’t want to have any parts to do with the movement.

Watson Jones III: When the Black Lives Matter movement was starting, I was in a different church context.