As a United Methodist pastor myself, I was intrigued by the cinematic version of Blood Done Sign My Name, based on the memoir of Timothy Tyson, currently a professor at Duke Divinity School and the University of North Carolina. His story, thanks to the stand his father took in Oxford, NC, in 1970, is forever bonded with the struggle of the civil rights movement against racism. The stories of Rev. Vernon Tyson (Ricky Schroeder, NYPD Blue) and Dr. Ben Chavis (Nate Parker, The Great Debaters) who grew into leadership in the NAACP, shine light on the aftermath of the violent murder of Vietnam veteran Dickie Marrow. Will violence breed more violence, or will the church actually step up and show something?

Rev. Tyson drags his two sons out to secretly observe a Klan meeting, telling them that it is one of the hardest things in life is to recognize evil, especially in people from whom we expect good. It's closely tied to the type of lesson many fathers teach their sons at some point, that doing something because everyone else is doesn't make it right and that standing up for what you believe in is always the right thing to do. Schroeder and the actors playing his boys are likable and earnest, and the object lesson remains bonded with the invitation that Tyson presents to a black minister to preach from his pulpit.

When Marrow is bludgeoned and shot to death, Tyson and Chavis watch the corrupt "investigation" and all-white paneled jury go down from their separate perspectives. Chavis grows more wrapped up in the movement to draw attention to the goings-on, while Tyson is more of an outside observer. The "offense" which leads to the murder is enough to make you cringe, the murder is enough to make you cry and scream out loud, and the "trial" is enough to make you rage against the system. Regardless of whether you've seen Mississippi Burning, the aforementioned Debaters, orEyes On The Prize documentaries, this movie belongs in the pantheon of civil rights stories of which we should remind our children. Jeb Stuart has adapted Tyson's work to screen and used his own experience as a writer (The Fugitive, Die Hard) to ramp up the tension.

Obviously, the villains here (Nick Searcy, Michael Rooker) play their roles to the hilt, creating an air where we absolutely hate them. We have to. But this evil that Stuart shines light through (and that Tyson wrote about) is something that we have to recognize in our world today. It might have a different face, but, please, this is forty years ago! This kind of thing does happen, over and over again, whether it's black, white, Mexican, Asian, Indian, etc. It might be sexual-orientation or religiously based, but we hide behind our religion (what were the Klansmen, again?), our politics, and our nationality when brutalizing people who are not like us.

You know what I liked the best about the movie? First, that a UM pastor would use The Book of Discipline to shut down a church leadership committee bent on maintaining a corrupted, racist power structure at the beginning; and second, that the same UM pastor would pray for forgiveness and healing within his community because his all-white church was part of the problem. We need to recognize that we are complicit in violence, persecution, and more when we allow the things we hate to happen without speaking up. And, yes, standing up costs us something; but we're walking in the footsteps of our rabbi, our Savior, our Lord, toward the cross and resurrection, so that justice may roll down like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream (Amos 5:24).

I wanted to clarify the "observer" tag that I put on Rev. Tyson earlier; he did more than observe, he stirred the pot and he followed Jesus. We see the movie mostly through the "white" point of view as the younger Tyson wrote about what he knew (plus interviews and research) that worked its way into this movie. But for any criticism I read of the story or the movie itself, I counter with this: none of those involved, white or black, were left unchanged. And many were fueled by this "collision" of race, hope, violence, injustice, and change, and became leaders who have shaped the world that their children and grandchildren have inherited. That's a story worth telling.