Michigan Pastor Says Church Has Repented for Using Word ‘Picnic’

A woke Michigan pastor said his church has repented for using the word “picnic” to describe a church garden party or barbecue, due to the “negative association in the black community.”

Tom Arthur, pastor of Lansing, Michigan’s Sycamore Creek Church — a Methodist organization — seemingly engaged in a discussion inspired by a program striving to “empower people and culture toward racial healing, equity and reconciliation.”

Arthur, a self-described “white moderate,” reacted to a reading of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

“Man, I feel like Dr. King is speaking directly to me. A white moderate,” Arthur said, adding his tendency is to “try to get rid of the tension as quickly as possible.”

“MLK’s words continued to prod me to get off of the sidelines and to get in the game to be as concerned with how racism is harming people of color as I am concerned with how dealing with racism might cause tension in my own life or in the life of my church,” he said, explaining that he has been thinking about ways the church itself can repent as individuals.

“And one of the ways we’ve been doing this here lately as a church is with some of the language that we use,” he said before explaining that they no longer use the common word “picnic.”

“As we’ve involved more and more black people in our worship services in South Lansing, we’ve come to learn that the word picnic has a really negative history, negative association in the black community, and that’s because during times of lynchings, many white people would bring a picnic with them and sit to watch this while eating a meal outside,” Arthur said.

“So the origin of the word picnic is from a 17th century French word … but in the black community, it’s taken on association of pick an ‘N word,’ and go lynch them,” he said, explaining that they have repented and use different words to describe gatherings to describe “having an outdoor meal together.”

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This is hardly the first instance of churches across the country going “woke,” as many showed their true colors after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Some woke churches went as far as asserting that the pro-life movement has a “demonic agenda,” claiming God to be “pro-choice” when it comes to terminating a pregnancy.

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