5 Faith Moments from Rep. John Lewis’ Funeral

(RNS) — Church bells and shofars sounded across the country as a group of family and friends — a reduced crowd due to the coronavirus pandemic — gathered Thursday (July 30) to remember Rep. John Lewis at his funeral service at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

The civil rights leader’s life was marked by his deep Christian faith.

He famously preached to his family’s chickens as a boy, before being ordained a Baptist minister when still a young man, and was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Lewis’ beliefs motivated him to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he was badly beaten by police for the right of African Americans to vote, a cause he later took up as a congressman.

And so it was fitting that his funeral was marked by powerful moments of faith.

The service was led by the Rev. Raphael Warnock, King’s successor as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist, and included messages by the Rev. James Lawson, members of Lewis’ family, his congressional staff, three U.S. presidents and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

They all spoke from Ebenezer’s pulpit in praise of a man whom Warnock described as “a living, walking sermon about truth-telling and justice-making, and he loved America until America learned how to love him back.”

Here are five more faith moments from Lewis’ funeral.

1. Churches rang their bells

Ebenezer…