Wide Open, Week 9: Love Your Enemies
About this episode
Rev. Kent Millard shares his experience of marching for voting rights and the call to love one's enemies.
Listen to the June 14, 2026 Sunday worship service from Zionsville United Methodist Church in Zionsville, IN. In March 1965, a group of voting rights marchers tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and were met with horses and bullwhips. The nation watched it happen on the evening news. Within days, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put out a call for help — and a classroom full of seminary students in Boston had to decide whether to answer it. One of them was a second-year student from South Dakota named Kent Millard. He boarded an overnight bus to Selma not knowing if he'd come home. He marched to the courthouse steps, surrounded by hecklers and state troopers, paired up with a woman from Selma who looked at his face and said, "You march with me and you'll be alright." And then, before they marched, a pastor asked everyone to bow their heads — and pray for the people across the street who wanted to hurt them. Twenty-five years later, Rev. Dr. Kent Millard told that story to a room full of Alabama pastors. Afterward, a man came up to him in tears. He had been one of the highway patrolmen that day. And he wanted to explain what had happened to him since. This…
More episodes of Zionsville United Methodist Church
- Wide Open, Week 14: From Grace to Mission
- Wide Open, Week 13: Hospitality
- Wide Open, Week 12: Going Through It
- Wide Open, Week 11: Grand Lessons
- Wide Open, Week 10: The Prodigal Son
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