As we approach another Martin Luther King Jr. Day – a time reserved for reflection on courage, sacrifice, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice – Detroit and the nation are confronted will be reflecting on some nonsensical statements made by a local pastor, too.
Lorenzo Sewell made a national name for himself in 2024 when he invited then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to his Detroit church. He built on that infamous name recently during a visit to the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. when he equated the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, with the Bloody Sunday march for voting rights in Selma.
This comparison represents so much more than a political misstep. It’s truly a deeply troubling distortion of history and of the moral standards that Dr. King epitomized.
In March 1965, a group of peaceful civil rights marchers, inclusive of Black Americans and their white allies, set out from Selma, Ala., to demand the most basic of democratic rights: the right to vote.
On what became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers and deputized vigilantes assaulted the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, inflicting injuries on men, women, and children alike. The images that followed stirred the conscience of the nation and helped propel the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. This was nonviolent protest in its most principled form, aimed at expanding freedom, not overturning the will of the people.
Fast forward to January 6, 2021: a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in a brazen attempt to subvert the results of a free and fair election. They carried weapons, threatened elected officials, smashed windows, and claimed a form of righteous grievance for a coup attempt.
There was nothing peaceful about it, nothing aimed at expanding rights, and nothing in the spirit of democratic inclusion. It was, simply put, an assault on democracy itself.
And yet, in recent commentary and appearances, Pastor Sewell — senior pastor of Detroit’s 180 Church and a high-profile supporter of former president Donald Trump — has offered rhetoric that blurs this distinction.
While Sewell’s political engagement is his right as a citizen and faith leader, his attempt to frame or justify the January 6 insurrection by invoking the moral weight of Selma’s Bloody Sunday is historically sloppy and morally offensive to the memory of those who bled for justice.
The Bloody Sunday march was a beacon of selfless courage. People of conscience marched unarmed into danger because they believed in a higher law that said every American, regardless of race, deserved equal access to the ballot box.
They did not gather to overturn an election or disenfranchise their neighbors; they were fighting for inclusion and equality, with the full understanding that nonviolence was itself a moral weapon against oppression.
In stark contrast, the January 6 rioters sought to deny the expressed will of the electorate
Their violence was purposive and aimed at intimidation. To equate these two events is to misunderstand, or even insult, the very nature of Dr. King’s philosophy and the ethical foundation of the civil rights movement.
Dr. King taught that justice must be pursued through love, discipline, and truth. He believed that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” — not because justice is spontaneous, but because people of conscience work tirelessly for it.
His commitment to nonviolence was not passive, yet it was strategically and spiritually grounded. To place morally ambiguous or outright harmful political actions on the same moral plane as the Selma march is to strip King’s legacy of its substance.
Some defenders of Sewell may argue that pastors should not be censored for offering political perspectives. Of course not. Faith leaders have played vital roles in shaping civic dialogue throughout American history. But with this freedom comes responsibility. One cannot lightly appropriate sacred history to sanitize or legitimize political grievances that, in reality, undermine the democratic process.
And the consequences of such comparisons ripple outward, diluting the lessons of history and cheapening the sacrifices of those who came before us. When we blur the distinction between a peaceful civil rights march and an attempted coup, we encourage a moral equivalence that diminishes both the lessons of the past and the integrity of our civic life.
Detroit, in particular, knows the power of principled struggle.
From the labor movement to civil rights activism, our city’s Black churches and pastors have often been at the forefront of justice movements. Yet there is a difference between speaking truth to power and using the pulpit to justify power’s excesses. A true spiritual leader does not cloak partisan ambition in the mantle of moral righteousness. Instead, they should hold all leaders accountable to the deeper principles of justice, compassion, and truth.
As the Michigan Chronicle commemorates Dr. King’s life and legacy in this Jan. 14 edition, it is worth remembering that King’s fight was not for some abstract notion of progress, but for real transformation. That kind of transformation requires humility, courage, and an unwavering commitment to justice for all.
There is ample space in our public square for robust debate and even disagreement about contemporary political issues. But we dishonor Dr. King, and the martyrs of the civil rights movement, when we equate events like January 6 with the righteous struggle that galvanized a nation to confront its own injustice. To do is a betrayal of the very ideals that King lived, suffered, and died to uphold.
In a time of increasing polarization, we need more honesty about history. Not less. We need leaders who can differentiate between moral courage and political convenience. And most of all, we need to ensure that the stories we invoke in service of our arguments are used with respect and not as rhetorical props to defend the indefensible.
