Jason Koski/University Photography

Joseph Holland delivers the Beimfohr Lecture Oct. 23.

With the recent incidents in Ferguson, Baltimore and Charleston, racial injustice again has come to the forefront as one of the country’s major issues. On Oct. 23 Cornell Trustee Emeritus Joseph H. Holland ’78, M.A. ’79, a Harlem-based lawyer, minister and activist, gave a historical recount of racial politics in America, highlighting the importance of the religious context surrounding its pivotal moments. Holland proposed that a return to religion and spirituality could be the solution to the racial injustice that we face today.

Holland began by describing America’s first Great Awakening, a religious revival led largely by the preacher Samuel Davies, which spread across the 13 colonies. This revival, Holland said, inspired Benjamin Franklin and the other founding fathers to use evangelical tenets as the basis of American policies, emphasizing concepts such a liberty, justice and equality.

In the second Great Awakening of the 19th century, the countrywide sermons of Francis Ashbury and freed slave Harry Hosier led to the foundation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, whose members included key leaders in racial justice such as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Holland explained that Douglass’ religious teachings caught the attention of President Lincoln, and consequent meetings between the two led to an “ideological shift” that inspired the 13th amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.

Holland continued onto the third Great Awakening of the 20th century, which he said formed the backbone of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and in particular the work of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which was rooted in his Christian faith. “Triumph rose by projecting the message of Christian love as a universal mandate, transcending racial denomination and even partisan divisions,” Holland said.

However, Holland pointed out the increasing secularism and the debilitating racial injustice that marks the 21st century. He said the number of adults in America who do not identify with a religion is increasing, as is atheism. Holland noted that there are more black men in jail than college and that black households on average earned 13 times less than white households. He remarked that these circumstances perhaps call for a fourth Great Awakening and renewed religious fervor.

Holland concluded with his own variation of the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.

“What happened to the American dream fulfilled?
Will it rise up like the glory of the sun?
Or will it strive like a champion on the run?
Will it brim with justice for all or heed the beckoning of freedom’s call?
Maybe it revives a declaration past with a trumpet blast”

The role that religion could play in race relations in today’s context may still be unclear, but as Holland said, “God works in mysterious ways.”

This Alan T. and Linda M. Beimfohr Lecture, “Racial Justice, Revival and the Refounding of the American Dream,” was sponsored by Chesterton House and Cornell United Religious Work.

Emily McNeil ’16 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.