A thread about the most viewed photo I’ve ever taken

Portland is nearing its 60th consecutive day of protests, starting around the same time as much of the country. Early on many of our Adventist pastors, admins, and lay people began showing up to add their voices and support.

This thread isn’t about that necessarily, but it’s the context in which this photo was taken. Additional context: much of white-led Adventism tends to directly oppose things like this. A conversation for another time.

Originally this photo was as impromptu as most others. Pastor Garth, Conference Pres Dan, and Pastor Reggie has been marching together for a while and decided to stop and pull down their masks for a photo.

Being the light-hearted and always funny person she is, pastor Moe Stiles saw me taking their photo, ran in and made an attempt to photo bomb (she could not see their serious faces from the back). The result? This photo.

I texted it out to everyone in it for whatever they wanted to use it for. No second thought really. We all know each other and understood the context that led to it. None of us knew how *far* this thing would spread. Seriously.

As SDA outlets began swarming to the story of an SDA conference president participating in a Black Lives Matter march, this photo became nearly synonymous with the story. There was a whole thing with people trying to figure out what Moe’s position in the photo implied.

For us, knowing what had happened? Very weird to read. But whatever. For me it was pretty fascinating (and sometimes discouraging) to see what message people got from this. For me? A message of hope. A tiny step toward truly caring about Black life, leadership, and dignity.

But for many others this photo became a symbol of apostasy. I’ll link to some of the different places it ended up below.

I don’t know that there’s a moral to this as much as I’d just like to get it written down. We’re still in this. Pastor @ReggieRichJr was just on MSNBC...

While down at the protests this week.

The protest stories and the church’s relationship to civil rights have become a staple piece of SDA conversation here in Oregon- woven all through our camp meeting, messaging, and planning. The long terms effects remain to be seen.

Anyway. If you’ve seen this photo and wondered about it- this is where it came from. Let me wrap up this thread with a bunch of stuff coming out of this whole experience between this historic moment and the Oregon SDAs.

Pastor Moe telling about the day this was taken: https://www.facebook.com/392695691086025/posts/1188579294830990/?vh=e&d=n

Pastor @ReggieRichJr on MSNBC

https://twitter.com/reggierichjr/status/1287173112920858624?s=21 https://twitter.com/reggierichjr/status/1287173112920858624

Our conference president’s reflections: https://gleanernow.com/news/2020/06/my-reflections-after-participating-peaceful-protest

Photo in Adventist Today

https://atoday.org/oregon-conference-pastors-join-peaceful-protest-in-portland/

Photo used in a video on our heresy:

First video to kick off our camp meeting: @ReggieRichJr sharing his experience and a word.

Important context: while many of us were working on camp meeting programming, Reggie has been downtown providing care to the protesting people of Portland. https://www.facebook.com/203563268198/posts/10157275157668199/?vh=e&d=n

Video taken, I believe, the same day as this photo by conference communication team member Dick Duerksen: https://www.facebook.com/OregonAdventists/videos/268963610988009/?extid=AmIFuPxKQuzoq750

Additional footage by Justin Khoe: https://www.facebook.com/1687546344855344/posts/2670582266551742/?vh=e&d=n

It’s just weird that the one that went everywhere was Moe’s photo bomb