Senior Bishops of Black Methodist United (BMU), who represent three major Methodist denominations, issued the following statement about the merciless killings of Black sons and daughters:

Each year on the last Monday in May, our nation, the United States of America, pauses to honor and mourn the military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces to safeguard the liberties we often take for granted.

As we weep and mourn the death of our 25 year old son, Ahmaud Arbery, who was mercilessly murdered in Georgia by three white men, a father and son, along with another who had the audacity to record this dastardly and despicable deed of death, we are now confronted with the death of George Floyd.

Long before the death of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, however, we were mourning the murders of a number of our sons and daughters across the nation, to name a few: Corey Patton, also killed in Georgia;

Sean Reed, Sandra Bland, Lennon Lacy, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner Breonna Taylor, all murdered.

From the streets of Minneapolis, where Mr. George Floyd went limp after a police officer jammed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, to the front steps of the White House to the hundreds of protesters who besieged cities like Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, America is once again faced with and haunted by its shameful history of systemic racism.

We, therefore:

§ Call on other people of faith, Congress of National Black Churches (CNBC), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The National African American Clergy Network (NAACN), The National Urban League, The Divine Nine and other faith-based, civic and social organizations to unite with us in demanding District Attorneys, in each case, to charge the perpetrators with first degree murder.