June 20, 2023 by Miguel Bustos

The work of Racial Justice and Reconciliation is hard but necessary for us to, indeed, be a beloved community.

As Christians, we believe that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus came down to earth and reaffirmed that fact with his message of love. This message was so powerful that he even got in trouble with many of the leaders of his day. When asked what the greatest commandment is, he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22: 36-40)

Yet, we still have division and hatred in our world. So why is it so hard to love one another?

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November 17, 2022 by Forrest Cuch

When I first became conscious of Jesus as a small child, I did not think or feel uncomfortable about his appearance or skin color. Then, as I got older, it occurred to me that Jesus was not like me, especially blond, blue-eyed Jesus, the surfer Jesus. Dark brown-haired Jesus was more comforting, but he still did not look like me. As an adolescent beginning the socialization process, I recall feeling not okay as I became more conscious of my skin color. The message was that there was something wrong with me and my Native people, but I could not understand it.

This was a painful time, not only because Jesus was white, but because I was not, and the white people seemed to either agree with or be influenced by this reality. This judgmental attitude was usually displayed by nervous, uptight behavior when these folks were around me and my family. Then, as I got older, pictures of surfer dude Jesus really pissed me off! By this time, I was conscious of racism and its reality and painful effects. I became defensive about this and angry at white people for what they did to my people and continue to do, via their judgmental attitude towards us. I began to think that Jesus was only in existence for white people and not us people of color.

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November 3, 2022 by Michael Carney

Jesus was not a white guy. The paintings you may have seen, portraying him with sandy-colored hair and blue eyes, are figments of the European imagination. Jesus was a Palestinian, and he looked like one. If he were living in the U.S. today, we’d see him as a “person of color.”

That’s just the visual impression, though. In Jesus’ world, there was no such thing as a “nuclear family,” Mom, Dad and the kids. In those days, families were large and extended; kids growing up saw their aunts and uncles and cousins all the time. People didn’t move around if they could help it; local communities were close-knit.

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August 4, 2022 by Craig Townsend

After five years of ordained ministry in parishes, and three teaching in a private school in New York City, I decided I would like to teach in one of the Episcopal seminaries. For that I would need a deeper academic background, so I pursued a Ph.D. in American Religious History at Harvard, specializing in 19th-century Episcopal history. I was especially interested in looking at the interaction of religion and culture. I was supported in this work for three years by a Fellows grant from the Episcopal Church Foundation. For my dissertation, I looked for the story of a church in an anomalous relationship to its diocese, thinking this would open a window into the religion and culture of the period. Soon I discovered St. Philip’s Church of New York City, the second Black Episcopal congregation in the country. St. Philip’s was listed in the annual diocesan journal for decades as “(colored - not in union with the diocese),” with occasional minor variations in wording. But no Episcopal parish can exist outside of the diocesan structure! My dissertation thus became the story of the 40-plus-year struggle of St. Philip’s to move from its founding in 1809, through the ordination of Peter Williams as the second Black priest in the denomination, to a regular worship life with the Book of Common Prayer and visitations by bishops, to only finally having its delegation admitted to the diocesan convention in 1853. It was a fascinating story with a great cast of characters, and after I spent a couple summers re-writing it into a more narrative form, it was published in 2005 by Columbia University Press as Faith in Their Own Color: Black Episcopalians in Antebellum New York City.

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May 18, 2022 by Cathy Hornberger

This month we offer five resources on race and multi-cultural congregations. Please share this digest with new members of your vestry and extend an invitation to subscribe to ECF Vital Practices ​​​​​​to receive Vestry Papers, blogs, and the monthly digest.

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March 8, 2022 by Liz Brignac

Many Episcopal parishes have acknowledged that it is past time for The Episcopal Church to confront our nation’s history of systemic racism and to begin building Beloved Community in our congregations and local communities, as we have been enjoined to do by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

Toward this end, ChurchNext, a ministry of Forward Movement, recently launched a free curriculum: Becoming Beloved Community: Understanding Systemic Racism For Individuals and For Groups. This six-session curriculum is available to any individual or congregation seeking deeper understanding of how systemic racism operates in our country and in our church. It is meant as a launching point for congregations and individuals that want to begin taking active steps toward healing our nation and our church from systemic racism and its effects.

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January 17, 2022 by Ranjit Mathews

The annual remembrance of Dr. King draws our attention to his call for unity across racial division. This message continues to resonate and inspire us today. However, in honor of him, we would do well to remember his other calls to action. At his death, Dr. King was fighting against what he called the “triplets of evil” -- militarism, racism, and economic injustice -- a combination which disregards human value. He and others committed themselves to solidarity with the poor of our nation to fight to close the economic gap by addressing the unholy trinity of these three features of American life. The effort was called The Poor People’s Campaign. It could be argued that this is ultimately what got him killed.

The Rev. Dr. William Barber and The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis have breathed new life into the Poor People’s Campaign. Beginning in 2018, “from Mother’s Day to the Summer Solstice, poor people and moral witnesses in 40 states committed themselves to a season of direct action to launch the Campaign. What ensued was the most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in the 21st century United States. More than a series of rallies and actions, a new organism of state-based movements was born. Now, in over 40 states, the groundwork for a mass poor people’s movement is emerging.” [Poorpeoplescampaign.org/about/] This revival of the Poor People’s Campaign came 50 years after Dr. King died working on it.

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Topics: Racial Justice
November 15, 2021 by Donald Romanik

Earlier this year, our Board of Directors adopted the “ECF Compass” – a rearticulation of our Purpose, Mission and Vision. This document also highlights who we are, what we do and how we do it. In addition to describing ourselves as Episcopal, Independent and Lay-led, we also state that ECF is inclusive, i.e, “we are anti-racist and committed to social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.”

While the process does involve an important missional and strategic conversation, it is fairly easy for an organization to make bold statements about who it is or hopes to be. The challenge becomes whether these articulations are more aspirational than actual. When it comes to being Episcopal, Independent and Lay-led, ECF has a long track record of demonstrating and living out these core qualities of our identity. When it comes to being Inclusive, or more specifically Anti-Racist, we have a much longer way to go. Clearly, our commitment in this area is aspirational but, at the same time, very sincere..

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June 3, 2021 by Linda Buskirk

The dark pandemic storm caught congregations in their own deep and familiar forests. Paths habitually taken to stay safe and comfortable suddenly washed away. Lightning-like bolts of truth jarred the consciences of many in pulpits and in pews.

As the storm subsides, some congregations, realizing they are still in the dark about the impacts of racism, injustice or poverty in their own communities, are heading out with flashlights or even flood lights. They are peering into nearby neighborhoods to discover ministry needs.

Certainly many needs exist, but how are churches to discover what God is calling them to find? One way is to simultaneously turn on another search beam – one pointing inward. This can be just as intimidating because shortcomings have a way of blocking light.

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May 21, 2021 by Greg Syler

One year ago, we watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered, those images still scarred in our memories, captured by a strong, faithful witness. We had been in pandemic lockdown for so long, so much festering and boiling over. Then face-to-face with a veritable series of pandemics – deep systemic injustice, especially around issues of race in our nation, and Covid-19, as well.

The Episcopal Church will mark and mourn this anniversary, and rightly so. Our church stood, then, and stands up, now, against “the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God” and “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” The Episcopal Church, shaped as we’ve been these past several generations by the words of the baptismal covenant, not only knows the words by heart but carries them into the public square. Of this, I am proud to be an Episcopalian: striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human person.

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January 29, 2021 by Ranjit Mathews

Many Americans witnessed the siege of the Capitol building on January 6th, just as Congress was certifying the electors in our most recent Presidential election. Irrespective of where you place yourself on the American political spectrum, it was shocking, and a horrible scene of violence. And yet, it must be said, that the insurrection of January 6th 2021 by domestic terrorists was the logical culmination of four years of dehumanizing rhetoric and actions. As the majority religion of the United States, we Christians are culpable and complicit, because far too many of us did not exercise our political values in concert with our baptismal faith to speak out against the President’s reckless words and behavior. Far too many of us preferred to remain silent through these tumultuous four years, and that silence has come home to roost.

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January 8, 2021 by Donald Romanik

Dear Friends,

We all are shocked, saddened, and disgusted by the events of January 6. A band of rioters, emboldened by the reckless and incendiary rhetoric of the President, interrupted the constitutional business of the people, violated the safety of our elected representatives, and desecrated our nation’s Capitol, the seat of our federal government and a sacred symbol of our republic. How could this possibly happen in the United States of America?

It has become clear that not only our buildings, but our very system of government which we hold so dear and take for granted, is vulnerable, fragile and capable of being fractured before our very eyes. While our American democracy will survive, it will take a lot of hard work by everyone, elected officials and all of us alike, to make it thrive once again.

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August 21, 2020 by Nicole Foster

The liturgy of the Episcopal Church is strikingly beautiful. The revenant execution of both Word and Sacrament draws many to a deeper relationship with God. But if we’re honest, many of us in the Body of Christ have witnessed another liturgy at work within its members, revealing a corporate disease of the heart. To clarify, I will give an example of the ritual within this sinful liturgy.

The Ritual:

Approximately 3 years ago, I was a new doctoral student and had been an aspirant to Holy Orders for quite some time. I was also working full time at an Episcopal Church in the North Texas area. I was well aware that locally, only about two or three Black people had made it through the discernment process, but I was hopeful. However, shortly after my start in the church, both parish and diocesan leadership decided to place a white male from another diocese, who had yet to finish his prerequisite seminary education, at the church for the discernment process. They wanted me to help train him yet denied my own discernment process. When I began to speak up about what I and others saw as racial injustice, they removed me and tried to silence me.

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Topics: Racial Justice
July 31, 2020 by Ken Howard

Community college campus ministry is likely the Church’s biggest blind spot, greatest overlooked missional opportunity, and even worse, a prime example of inadvertent systemic racism and classism. Which means it’s time we started asking ourselves, “Who are we missing?”

Over my 25+ years of ordained ministry, I have observed that as a general rule congregations and judicatories seem to put much more resources into campus ministry at 4-year colleges and universities than they do into 2-year community colleges. Not that campus ministries at 4-year institutions get all that much attention compared to typical congregation-based ministries, mind you. Most clergy seem to view campus ministry as a “junior varsity sport” when it comes to vocations, and those who start there quickly come to see congregation-based ministry as a better career move.

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July 23, 2020 by Megan Allen

“Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the world.” In my diocese, we all know this catchphrase by heart. I thought of it again as the grief, anger, and frustration of the black community erupted after the senseless death of George Floyd. As a seemingly unending video reel of protest, violence, and outrage played on social media, I felt more and more isolated and frustrated as a woman of color—not only in the world, but particularly in the church. I love God. I love my neighbor. But can the world actually change?

Our faith says yes. The world can change if we change it. Doing so requires us to be open to times like these – transformative spaces of immense spiritual growth that have the potential to change us forever. If we are able to be resilient in those times, we can adapt to the stressors of spiritual growth constructively, remaining grounded yet responsive, open to all potential possibilities. When we emerge from these times of intense spiritual growth, our transformation strengthens our discipleship and changes how we encounter the world. I am interested in how best to equip lay and ordained leaders for this kind of transformation by providing trauma- and psychologically-informed support, grounded in spiritual practice, that encourages us to be resilient as we transform.

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Topics: Racial Justice
July 9, 2020 by Amanda L. Nickles

When we think of Dr. King most of us remember his “I Have a Dream” speech delivered to those gathered around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. in 1963. There have been few memorable speeches made before or since then. The words of Dr. King will linger on for many more years to come. He dreamed of a day when racial justice and equality would come true. Of course, with all the recent tragic events happening in our country his dream has yet to be completely fulfilled.

Some of you are too young to understand what certain Americans had to endure Some of you never saw the separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks or colored balconies in movie theatres Some of you are too young to understand how a tired seamstress, named Rosa Parks, could be thrown in jail and fined simply because she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus so a white man could sit down

And that list could go on and on.

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Topics: Racial Justice
July 2, 2020 by Ken Howard

When we started The FaithX Project a little over three years ago, we chose as our mission “helping faith communities survive and thrive in turbulent times.” Little did we know how prophetic those words would be or how turbulent the times we would be working in. In the last three months we have experienced:

A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that has closed down society, even houses of worship, An economic collapse to rival the Great Depression, and... Societal upheaval not seen since the assasination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, which erupted in response to the murder of a unarmed black man by a policeman and to the systemic racism it represented.

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June 1, 2020 by Donald Romanik

Dear Friends,

While the current pandemic has impacted all of us, the negative effects of COVID-19 are significantly more pronounced in communities of color in all aspects of life - health, employment, schooling and food security. Current data reveals that black and Latino populations are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus. Millions of our fellow Americans do not have the luxury of working from home or sheltering in place and are trying to navigate this crisis without the basics we often take for granted. Sadly, these are communities for whom life in this country has been consistently hard and unjust. The current situation has simply laid bare the systemic inequities that already existed.

Last week, we woke to a deeply disturbing video of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. About a month ago, we witnessed the tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man in Brunswick, Georgia, out on his daily jog, being fatally shot by two white men. These incidents inform us yet again, of the injustices that our black and brown siblings live through every single day - injustices that put their very lives in peril.

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Topics: Racial Justice