Rev. Michael Woolf, ThD

Photo credit: Silma Suba

"On October 14, 2023, a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was stabbed 26 times to his death by his family’s landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, in Plainfield, Illinois, in an apparent anti-Muslim hate crime. Seven months after Al-Fayoume’s murder, on May 19, a sunny Sunday afternoon in Chicago, over 50 community members gathered inside the stained-glass chapel of the First United
Methodist Church of Chicago to host an interfaith memorial service in Al-Fayoume’s honor. The tall skyscraper church, also called The Chicago Temple, stands at the corner of Washington and Clark in downtown Chicago."

"Leaders of the Christian,Jewish, and Muslim faiths in the Chicago area came together Monday night to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Sheikh Hassan Aly, imam anddirector of religious affairs at the Mecca Center in Willowbrook; Rabbi Brant Rozen, founding rabbi of the synagogue Tzedek Chicago and the Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, senior minister at the Lake Street Church of Evanston, all pushed for peace in the war before Israel and Hamas."

"The war in Israel andPalestine is not only a humanitarian crisis – it is a moral, and it is a
spiritual one," said Woolf.

“In our increasingly separated and polarized society, we celebrate the prophetic and courageous witness and leadership of pastors Nabors and Woolf in leading their congregations toward racial justice and reconciliation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Haggray, executive director of ABHMS and CEO of Judson Press.

“In their pursuit of reparations and the restoration of the relationship of their two congregations, pastors Nabors and Woolf exemplify the pursuit of peace and justice that was the hallmark of the life and ministry of Edwin T. Dahlberg,” said the Rev. Dr. Jamie Washam, president of ABHMS’ board of directors.

“I know it’s tough to acknowledge some of this history,” explains Dr. Woolf, in Evanston, “but we can get past the initial sort of anger at being challenged by it; then we have an immense opportunity for white members to have a redemption arc, to be able to talk frankly about race in a way that can be useful.”

Further reporting can be found here and here.

Commitment to multi-faith conversations is an important part of Lake Street Church, said Rev. Woolf, “because if a lot of the frameworks that we use in our parlance and how we talk about things in America are Christian – I mean, they have a Christian genealogy of the terms. And that only gets us so far. So other traditions have different ways of thinking about things and talking about things … [and] putting together those conversations and hearing those different frameworks, those different metaphors, is really important to help build the resources for thinking about repair and reparations for Black residents of Evanston. A lot of times we make advances through metaphor and through symbol and through thinking about things that way.”

One of the ways that churches create reparations is to highlight how to have conversations about reparations from a faith-based perspective, both pastors said.

“Part of that is just taking a risk,” said Rev. Woolf. “And we want to help people feel more comfortable in their risk-taking by situating this as a conversation that’s being had, and also by saying, ‘Your faith tradition has something to say about that. And to be big, to be bold, to dig deep into the well of your faith, and to see what it has to say about this really important issue – that’s really a challenge. But it’s also something that I really feel is quite important. … And that might lead you to some difficult conversations: What ways have churches been collaborators with white supremacy, been racist, been white supremacists? Have they benefited from racism and white supremacist society?”

The ongoing question, said Rev. Woolf, is, “How can churches be a part of that repair?”