Joe Biden’s Call for Faith
Joe Biden urged Americans to keep “the faith” on Sunday, January 19, on the eve of his adversary Donald Trump’s inauguration, during a final visit to the heart of the Black community in South Carolina, pivotal to his 2020 presidential victory. The 46th American president, who will hand over power to the 47th on Monday, chose to honor the African-American civil rights hero, Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated on April 4, 1968. For their final official trip, Joe and Jill Biden spent the day in the historic city of Charleston, South Carolina, marked by slavery and racial segregation, and in 2015, by a horrific racist massacre of Black parishioners. The devout Catholic Democratic president attended a religious service at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church. “Every time I spend time in a Black church, I think of one thing: the word ‘hope’,” stated the 82-year-old politician, citing his two icons for over half a century: the legendary Martin Luther King Jr. and the iconic Senator Bobby Kennedy, also assassinated in 1968.
Message of Optimism
“My father used to say that the greatest sin is the abuse of power,” continued Joe Biden, never directly mentioning Donald Trump. However, he argued that “faith teaches us that the America of our dreams is always closer than we think,” in a far more optimistic speech than his very somber farewell to the Nation on Wednesday when he denounced an “oligarchy taking shape in America.” “Let’s keep the faith for better days,” he concluded to the applause of standing faithful in the church. On Sunday, Joe Biden also granted his final presidential pardons and commutations: he posthumously pardoned Jamaican Marcus Garvey, a Black activist and central figure in the Rastafarian movement. Marcus Garvey, who died in 1940, was a pioneer of Pan-Africanism, advocating for the return of descendants of Black slaves to Africa.
Contributing: Le Monde with AFP.
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