The mission of the Justice Committee is to serve St. Richard’s as its primary resource and catalyst for the work of social justice.

Operating Principles:

• We will plan activities that align with our Baptismal Covenant to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being”.
• We will pursue issues which address the dignity and rights of people who are socially, politically, or economically disadvantaged.
• We will maximize opportunities to assist and work with organizations, coalitions, and neighborhood groups to promote our common interests.
• We will operate from and promote social action that includes both the private, personal commitments to justice and also public, communal, and institutional commitments to social justice.

Sacred Ground is a film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity.

The 10-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

Sacred Ground is part of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society.  This series is open to all, and especially designed to help white people talk with other white people.  Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love.

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/

If you are intereted in taking a class in the near future please contact katestockman61@gmail.com.

Sacred Ground Resources

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/michaelcurry/gathering-on-sacred-ground/

All are welcome to join this book club where we will be reading both nonfiction and fiction books related to issues of justice. Selections will be made by the group and discussion leaders may rotate, depending on the composition and size of the group.

Approximately twenty parishioners from St. Richard’s finished studying the book Jesus and the Disinherited in June 2021. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

Plans are being made to study a second book later in the year. Suggestions for our next Book Club selection are welcome.

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID!!!

Join us the weekend of September 18 and 19 in the St. Richard’s Parish Hall to view this moving documentary written and narrated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  

Saturday, September 18 from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 (Snacks and drinks will be available)

Episode One:

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the roots of African American religion beginning with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the extraordinary ways enslaved Africans preserved and adapted their faith practices from the brutality of slavery to emancipation.

Sunday, September 19 from approximately 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. (Lunch will be available.)

Episode Two:

Discover how the Black church expanded its reach to address social inequality and minister to those in need, from the Jim Crow South to the heroic phase of the civil rights movement, and the Black church's role in the present.

***You do not need to be present on both days to benefit from seeing this documentary. ***

Please email Kathy (katestockman61@gmail.com ) or let a member of the Justice Committee know that you are attending, so we know how much food to purchase.

‘The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song” is a moving four-hour, two-part series from executive producer, host and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse  Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, that traces the 400-year-old story of the Black church in America, all the way down to its bedrock role as the site of African American survival and grace, organizing and resilience, thriving and testifying, autonomy and freedom, solidarity and speaking truth to power.

The documentary reveals how Black people have worshipped and, through their spiritual journeys, improvised ways to bring their faith traditions from Africa to the New World, while translating them into a form of Christianity that was not only truly their own, but a redemptive force for a nation whose original sin was found in their ancestors’ enslavement across the Middle Passage.

www.episcopalchurch.org

www.aclu.org

Race - The Poer of an Illusion (PBS)

Race Forward: What is Systemic Racism (video series)

Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends

Project Implicit - a personal inventory review to examine your own implicit bias

Racial Equity Institute

Sacred Conversations to End Racism, produced by the United Church of Christ

Coming to the Table: Working together to create a just and truthful society that acknowledges and seeks to heal from the racial wounds of the past, from slavery and the many forms of racism it spawned

The Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

PODCASTS

https://onbeing.org  (Krista Tippett)

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/uncivil

https://racialheresy.com/

https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

https://www.moumethodist.org/faithandracepodcast