Engaging Racial Justice
THOUGHT Provide an approach to racial reconciliation, healing, and justice grounded in our baptismal vows. Emphasis should be on our local context in western Oregon, our history with respect to racial prejudice, and the wages of practices and assumptions from racial prejudice.
WORD Describe how the work of this group will deepen, strengthen, and renew our capacity to fulfill our baptismal vows and to live into Jesus’ commandments.
DEED Provide resources, methods, and approaches our faith communities can use to understand the effect of everyday choices and behaviors with respect to racism. Deploy approaches to engage members of the diocese to reflect theologically and faithfully on the ways racism has harmed us individually and collectively as the body of Christ and provide opportunities to be healed, reconciled, and transformed.
Our work is an embodied acknowledgement of our baptismal covenant. We acknowledge the role of the body in racism and through discernment and groundedness we are making whole what has been broken. We ground our work in faith, truth, and reconciliation while renouncing evil and striving for justice and peace among all people.
“But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Amos 5:24
RESOURCES
Speaker Series
Blogs
Oregon Remembrance Project – Truth Telling in Coos Bay
This post was written by Taylor Stewart, founder of Oregon Remembrance Project. Join the...
Helpful Links
- The Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing – based in Atlanta, they offer resources, workshops, webinars, articles, and more around the healing work of racial reconciliation.
- The Oregon Remembrance Project focuses on helping communities with projects about rectifying historical injustice through their three R’s of Reconciliation: Remembrance, Repair, and Redemption.
- Anti-Racism Trainings offered for individuals and faith communities in order to work towards becoming Christ’s Beloved Community.
Upcoming Events
MEMBERS
Ernestein Flemister,
Missioner for Racial Reconciliation
St. Luke’s, Grants Pass
Jeanne Kaliszewski, Co-Convener
St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukie
Michael J. Montgomery, Co-Convenor
St. Philip the Deacon Parish, Portland
Madeline Moore, Co-Convenor
St. David of Wales, Portland
Dr. Melissa Bird, Co-Convenor
Good Samaritan, Corvallis
Ryan Baker-Fones
St. Mary’s, Eugene
Bernadine Caldwell Clay
St. Philip the Deacon, Portland
Gary Forner
St. Paul’s, Salem
Rev. Chris Hertlein
St. James/Santiago, Lincoln City
Barb Millikan
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland
Hana Rubens
St. Luke’s, Grants Pass
Contact the working group
[email protected].