F. Willis Johnson: Prophets, not spectators — the class of 2025 and the work of repair

Within the hearts and faces of the Class of is a mixture of anticipation and apprehension on the edge of a world that is by turns irreverent and weary defiant and desperate for something more These are not gentle times Our society market system and politics all feel stretched and fraying sometimes broken But that my friends is precisely why you are yet alive and must live free Every generation is confronted and confounded by choice Certain choose complacency seduced by comfort and the illusion that someone else will do the hard work of changing things Others the rare ones decide to become prophets and revolutionaries Not the kind who burn it all down for the sake of spectacle but those who dare to see what isn t yet and speak it into being Those brave enough to confront the world s irreverence with a stubborn civil audacity Leadership in these times demands a prophetic imagination That means you must learn to see beyond what s obvious or easy It means naming the wounds no one wants to touch and calling out the truths that make the settled squirm It means refusing to settle for the world as it is a world blighted by division distraction and cheap cynicism Instead you must insist on the world as it could be and start living out that vision now even when it isn t popular or costs you something Don t get it twisted Prophecy absent of civility is just noise It s too easy far too easy to allow righteous anger to curdle into bitterness to imagine that because you are right you are justified in scorning shaming or silencing those who differ That is not the way of moral leadership To start a revolution that endures you must learn to build bridges and barricades Each of us must master the art of disagreeing without dehumanizing Humane practice is radical empathy that listens even when you long to shout and to forgive when you are aching to rage Undeniably you ve come of age when the air is thick with suspicion and contempt Your generation has been confined from quarantine and by the glare of your screens as a pandemic exposed the cracks in our society You ve endured leaders bickering over scraps of power while real people suffered hungry scared unseen Likewise your peers and you marched maybe mourned or wondered whether this could change However the world is not waiting for someone else We are waiting for you And we do not need you to fall in line nor mimic the failings of those who ve come before The world is waiting for leaders like you to be bold enough to speak with your voice sharpened by truth softened by grace and animated by the unyielding conviction that we can do better and are destined to do better The American project is a patchwork of dreamers and doers saints and sinners stitched together by the thread of promise that stretches across generations What began as a wild experiment equal parts hope and hubris has inevitably depended on the willingness of ordinary people to imagine something better and then definitely try to build it Each generation inherits the job half-finished with frayed edges and glaring mistakes Approach the task with a stubborn sense that it s worth mending Now that group project lands in your lap Your generation gets to decide if democracy is still alive still pulsing with possibility or if it s just a story people tell themselves something dusty and ceremonial trotted out for parades but hollow at the core The choice isn t abstract It s the lived reality of who speaks listens and gets heard So what will moral and democratic revival look like when the ground beneath is unsteady Even when your voice shakes and courage escapes you to name injustice genuine humility allows you to learn from challenges to your assumptions Refuse the seduction of easy answers and shallow applause May the love of neighbor inform your every thought action innovation vote and prayer I implore you Do not wait for perfect conditions unanimous approval or the blessing of the powerful Take up your duty Build a beloved public not by shouting down your adversaries but by calling them in and insisting that their humanity is tangled up with yours whether they like it or not Help heal the nation by holding up your corner and mending your block Bring about justice by treating the preponderance overlooked preferentially Model peace through the endurance of discomfort and earnest engagement in reconciliation Lead by showing up standing firm getting up and trying again when falling short The world is crowded noisy and sometimes hostile Yet it remains open for the kind of distinct light only you possess I encourage you to write your name in ink so it won t fade in this chapter of history Go forth with leadership that is sermon and song Be bold Be compassionate Be prophetic Be civil Making your way in the world in contemporary times takes everything you ve got Moreover it is your duty The Rev Dr F Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur author scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied He wrote this for The Fulcrum a nonprofit nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems Related Articles Allison Schrager America s broken politics is emerging economics too Ross Douthat Conservatives are prisoners of their own tax cuts Barnett Kristof It isn t freedom if it s not for everyone Thomas Friedman How Trump s big beautiful bill will make China great again Kristof Barnett The quiet girls revolution in west Africa