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| Oklahoma State Representative John Bennett of Sallisaw. |
On September 11, 2014, Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry (TMM) released a statement condemning State Representative John Bennett of Sallisaw for comments he made about the dangers, he perceives, of Islam in the United States.
On February 15, 2015, TMM promoted a candle light prayer vigil held at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church for three Muslim college students: Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, who were shot to death by an atheist over a parking space in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
While it is reasonable for TMM to condemn the murder of anyone over a parking space, regardless of religion, TMM had no comment on the beheading of Colleen Hufford and the stabbing of Traci Johnson, employees of Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma. Alton Nolan, a recent convert to Islam who had renamed himself Jah'Keem Yisreal, on September 24, 2014, beheaded Colleen Hufford and stabbed Traci Johnson at the Vaughn Foods factory in Moore, Oklahoma. He was stopped from killing Johnson when the owner of the factory, a reserve Oklahoma County Deputy, shot Nolan/Yisreal, wounding him. TMM promoted and participated in a prayer vigil for the killings that occurred in North Carolina, a thousand miles from Tulsa, but made no mention of a killing by an Islamic fanatic, a little over a hundred miles away in Moore. In my meeting with Rev. Ray Hickman, TMM's executive director, on November 8, 2016, I asked him about this.
His response was he believed Nolan/Yisreal was acting out of “mental illness” rather than Islamic religious fervor. I responded that shooting people in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, over a parking space was pretty nuts as well. It should be noted that Traci Johnson, who survived the knife attack claimed Nolan/Yisreal said he did “not like white people.” A judge in August 2016 ruled that Nolan/Yisreal was not competent to enter a guilty plea and was sent to the state mental hospital in Vinita for further evaluation. Rev. Hickman could now say, because of the judge's August 2016 ruling, he believed the perpetrator to be mentally ill, but he didn't have that judge's ruling on which to rely when the attack occurred two years earlier. Wouldn't it have been the decent thing for this organization to condemn the attacks when they occurred? Didn't Colleen Hufford's life mean something to this social justice group? Could it be that TMM wasn't interested in the Moore beheading because it didn't fit their narrative? After all, Nolan/Yisreal was a black male who converted to Islam, and Colleen Hufford was a white woman and a Christian. |
| Nolan/Yisreal |
TMM has also chosen to ignore other killings closer to home. On July 7, 2016, five Dallas, Texas, police officers were shot to death while providing security for a Black Lives Matter protest. The perpetrator was a black male named Micah Xavier Johnson, who was later killed by police. The following week, TMM sent out an e-mail with no mention of the Dallas shootings. Again, the narrative was probably wrong for TMM. Then there was the June 26, 2016, killing of Jacques Hamel, an elderly French Roman Catholic priest, in Normandy by three Islamic men who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). One of the attackers was Adel Kermiche, an immigrant from Algeria who had earlier attempted to enter Syria to join ISIS and was turned back at the Turkish border. There was no mention from TMM about this attack on a Catholic priest even though TMM claims solidarity with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and prides itself for the diocese's membership in TMM.
Then there were the massacre in Paris on November 13, 2015, by Islamic immigrants; the July 14, 2016, truck massacre in Nice, France, by a Muslim immigrant from Algeria; the
September 17, 2016, knife attack at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, by a Muslim immigrant from Kenya; and the November 28, 2016, car and knife attack at Ohio State by a Somali Muslim student. TMM had no comment whatsoever about these murders by Muslims. Why? Well, TMM is a big supporter of welcoming refugees, mostly Muslims from Syria, into the Tulsa area.
In an e-mail dated February 12, 2015, TMM wrote about the aforementioned three Muslim students shot to death in Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
Whether committed out of some form of religious bigotry, hateful act or simply as part of a turf battle over a disputed piece of ground, the killing of anyone simply because of who they are -- Black or White, Muslim or Christian or Jew -- is wrong and immoral. TMM does not have a Twitter account, but if we did, we would set our hashtag as
AllLivesMatter!
Ray Hickman and TMM obviously don't really believe that all lives matter, but the words sound nice.
After the accidental shooting on September 16, 2016, by Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby of Terence Crutcher, a black man high on the hallucinogenic drug known as PCP, TMM released a statement praising city leaders from Police Chief Chuck Jordan to Mayor-elect G.T. Bynum for stepping up to bring calm in the black community. The principal city leader, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, who was out in front of the Crutcher crisis and received a phone call of thanks from President Obama for his handling of the matter, was left out of the statement. I asked Rev. Hickman why he made no mention of Mayor Bartlett. He said, “Because I don't think he's done a very good job; he doesn't support Syrian refugees.”
In an e-mail dated February 9, 2017, TMM posted this statement about President Trump's executive order on immigration:
TMM is gravely concerned that President Trump, who obviously and legitimately has a responsibility to ensure safe border control, is overstepping his authority by issuing a reactive, short sighted, narrow minded and obviously discriminatory order. His actions affect permanent residents who are legally living in the US, able to travel back and forth internationally but who are now caught up in ill-conceived plans to restrict Muslims. Beyond the legally establish [sic] permanent residents, Mr. Trumps [sic] actions that ban, or temporarily ban, Muslims, and Muslims alone, appears to be a religious test for due process and rights available to other faith traditions. His ban, even temporarily, on all persons from specific countries, solely because they are of a particular nationality, is also discriminatory and harkens back to a time when the USA limited immigration of Chinese, Japanese, Irish and others. These previous acts, while technically legal at the time, have been perceived in hindsight to be disrespectful, dehumanizing and mean-spirited, as well as discriminatory [sic] Title VII of the US Statutes and the Immigration Act of 1965 does not allow discrimination on the basis of religion or nationality, among other protected categories. Why is Mr. Trump's order acceptable? TMM doesn't think it is. Is this helpful and constructive domestic policy? TMM doesn't think so!
The e-mail goes on to state:
President Donald Trump should not halt refugee resettlement, lower the overall number of refugees we resettle, or stop resettlement based on religion or country of origin.
And TMM has a petition for those in agreement to sign. This is from a group that remained silent after a series of attacks from Muslims in the United States and Europe.
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| Refugees in Europe |
In an e-mail dated February 19, 2015, Ray Hickman promoted discussion of the pornographic movie 50 Shades of Grey. He told me in our meeting that he saw the movie and even hosted his own event titled “50 Shades of Faith.” From that e-mail there is this:
People of faith talking about intimacy, sexuality and spirituality will be the theme of The CAVU [Center for Abundant Living and Loving] Center's conference on human sexuality, Saturday, February 21, from 9:00 to 3:00 pm at All Souls Unitarian Church.
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| Reverend Ray Hickman |
TMM supported removal of the Ten Commandments monument on the state's capitol grounds in an August 20, 2015, e-mail.
Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry took a position against the Oklahoma legislature ending the earned income credit with talking points provided by Dave Blatt of the left-wing Oklahoma Policy Institute in an e-mail dated May 16, 2016.
I asked Ray Hickman why his organization has never said anything about the lawsuit brought by The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns, against the Obamacare contraception mandate. He said he had never heard about it! Perhaps it wasn't covered on National Public Radio? I explained that the federal government was mandating contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) for employees of businesses and organizations. The Little Sisters of the Poor own nursing homes and have staff that would be covered under this plan in direct violation of Catholic Church teaching forbidding contraception (Humanae Vitae 1968). He did agree with me that this could be considered a matter of conscientious objection by a religious organization.
Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry is an interfaith organization encompassing various religions. It should be noted that the largest religious denomination in Oklahoma, the Southern Baptist Convention, has no affiliation with TMM.
