Dr. Doug Koopman, Professor of Political Science at Calvin University and former program director for the Henry Institute clearly recalls Lewis’s visit to Calvin.
The Henry Lecture brings a prominent Christian political practitioner to campus to address some aspect of the interplay between religion and politics, inspiring Calvin participants and the broader community to actively integrate a Christian worldview and practical politics. In 2000, Representative Lewis was the first sitting politician, the first active U.S. House member, and the first African-American to deliver a Henry Lecture, in that fourth year of the Institute’s existence.
As a young college student and civil rights activist during the 1960’s, John Lewis led a series of sit-in demonstrations at segregated lunch counters in the South, led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August of 1963. At that demonstration, Lewis gave one of the keynote addresses, a speech that propelled him to the front of the civil rights leadership. As a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, Lewis was a regular target of law enforcement officers, and he was arrested at least 45 times and attacked by police on numerous occasions. Most publicized of those incidents was his beating while kneeling to pray on the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965.
At that Henry Lecture in 2000, I remember Lewis clearly infusing personal faith into his talk, as he stated that Christians must be present in the public square, strongly drawing on their faith commitments. Lewis believed that Christians needed to expand the original meaning of the civil rights activists’ “beloved community” beyond racial considerations, to include a range of other issues including economic justice—both domestically and worldwide. For Lewis, the underlying principle of his vision for this effective and faithful Christian social action was always nonviolence.
Representative Lewis’ very personal and honest message at the Lecture, and through all his years of public service, was rooted in his belief that Christians in our country can and will make a difference against the injustices that surround us. He called on all of us to answer that call.