Jordan Edwards

Songs? Prayers? Scriptures? Moving story on funeral for 15-year-old shot by police lacks religious details

Once again, a police shooting of a young black male is making national headlines.

If you haven't followed the story of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards' death in a Dallas suburb, the Los Angeles Times had an insightful overview Sunday. However, the Times piece isn't the one I want to critique. There's really not a strong religion angle there.

Rather, I want to analyze the Dallas Morning News' front-page story Sunday on the teen's funeral and highlight what I believe is missing from a GetReligion perspective.

But before I get to that, the Times' story provides some important context: 

Jordan Edwards’ “ginormous” smile, they said, could light up a room — even one as large as Friendship Baptist Church in Mesquite, where a community gathered to mourn a life just beginning to blossom.

The car drove away from the high school house party, down a street in a Dallas suburb dotted with single-level brick homes, when the police officer raised his rifle and fired.

A bullet tore through the front passenger window, killing an unarmed 15-year-old: Jordan Edwards.
As the death reignited a national conversation about race and the police, it’s also elevated what’s viewed as a well-understood fact in many African American communities: When you’re black — even if you’re a child — you can be viewed as a threat to police.
“These are trained professionals, who are supposed to make rational decisions, but they’re not,” said Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney and former president of the National Bar Assn., a network of black lawyers and judges. “And yet again our children — I repeat, children — are paying the ultimate price.”
Crump spoke Saturday, the day a funeral was held for Jordan, a freshman who played on the Mesquite High School football team. A white hearse carried his body from a Baptist church to the cemetery, and teammates attended the burial wearing their white-and-maroon jerseys.

Now, back to the Dallas newspaper's funeral coverage, which opens like this:


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