Reverend Dr. Howard-John Wesley has a way of turning a Sunday morning into national news, and the people of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia have learned to lean in when he rises.
They had watched him do it once already. Months ago, with the country lowering its flags for right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk, Wesley stood in that same spot and refused the script the nation handed him, telling his congregation that you do not become a hero in death when you were a weapon of the enemy in life. The clip traveled the world before the benediction.
So when he stepped to the pulpit again in mid-May, the ten thousand in the sanctuary and the tens of thousands more watching from their phones leaned toward him and waited…