reflections
These initial reflections were shared by Rev. Dr. Yvonne Delk, Rev. Dr. Nozomi Ikuta, and Luci Murphy, who were part of the group connected with the 1992 Kairos USA document and met the publishers of the 1985 South African Kairos Document, and by C. Stonebraker-Martinez and Marc Alvarado, the second and third signers of the document, with whom Nozomi worked in Cleveland. We encourage you to add your reflections by sending a message through the contact form or emailing mailto:kairosdoc2025@gmail.com.
Please note that the organizations listed are for identification purposes only.
THE BELOVED COMMUNITY
I stand in solidarity with the other names on this Kairos document. Our moment of truth is revealed in Dr. King’s words that a threat to life anywhere is a threat to life everywhere. Our humanity and faith connect us to starvation in Gaza; immigration raids in homes, churches, and schools; increasing the wealthy on the backs of the poor; and the dismantling of diversity and democracy. My signature is a witness to the beloved community of life, liberty, love and justice.
Rev. Dr. Yvonne V. Delk, United Church of Christ ordained minister, Norfolk, VA
stop killing unarmed women and children
The government of these United States needs to stop spending our tax dollars to kill babies and unarmed women and children the way it did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and has continued to do in Gaza in the present day. Instead the US government needs to start studying how to get along with people in other countries for our mutual benefit.
Luci Murphy, Soka Gakkai International, Washington, DC. Although Luci is a Buddhist, she affirms the ethical teachings of Jesus.
interconnected
My father was serving in the Army when his family was herded off to a concentration camp in 1942. The images of rubble, barbed wire, guard towers, emaciated children, and people on trains bound for concentration camps swirl together our family’s experiences, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, the starvation and genocide in Gaza, and ICE raids today. The horrors are interconnected but so are we. It’s time for us to unite against fascism and stand up for justice, freedom, and our shared humanity.
Rev. Dr. C. Nozomi Ikuta, Grace Congregational Church of Harlem, New York, NY
Jesus was killed by the empire
The empire is killing—again. From Gaza to the US border, from the prisons to the pipelines, we are witnessing a global war against the poor, the colonized, the 'othered’. But the Spirit is rising. This is a kairos moment—not to reform what kills us, but to resist it, dismantle it, and build a world where love, not domination, rules.
We are united across traditions by a shared truth: a world rooted in dignity, justice, and love is not only possible-it is imperative. No matter our faith or background, we are called to reject systems of oppression. Jesus was arrested for sedition, not respectability. He didn’t die for empire—he was killed by it. So let the church rise up—or get out of the way.
C Stonebraker-Martinez, Co-Director of the InterReligious Task Force, Cleveland, OH
reject so-called normalcy
This Kairos document is not a call for a return to so-called normalcy, to preserve a false democracy and a neoliberal world order that serves militarism over community, corporations over people, and profit over prophetic voice. Rather, it is a call to reject this world order that has permitted US imperialism and led us to the brink of domestic fascism. It is a call by grassroots clergy and laypeople alike, to people of every faith and denomination, to secularists, atheists, and agnostics, to Democrats, Republicans, and independents, to socialists and anarchists; to understand the teachings of the human Jesus, quoted in the Bible and the Quran; Jesus the revolutionary, anti-capitalist, Palestinian Jewish martyr; to recognize that all people are chosen and welcome, no one is illegal, everyone is deserving and worthy of life and liberation, and that love will win.
Marc Alvarado, the InterReligious Task Force, Cleveland, OH