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.

Dates for Next Book Club: to Be Announced

Choice #1:

"This book will make a profound difference for the church in this moment in history."
The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry

Sometimes it takes disruption and loss to break us open and call us home to God. It’s not surprising that a global pandemic and once-in-a-generation reckoning with white supremacy on top of decades of systemic decline have spurred Christians everywhere to ask who we are, why God placed us here and what difference that makes to the world.

In this critical yet loving book, the author explores the American story and the Episcopal story in order to find out how communities steeped in racism, establishment, and privilege can at last fall in love with Jesus, walk humbly with the most vulnerable and embody beloved community in our own broken but beautiful way.

The Church Cracked Open invites us to surrender privilege and redefine church, not just for the sake of others, but for our own salvation and liberation.

Choice #2

An impassioned, thoughtful, and fearless essay on the effects of racism on the American identity by one of our country’s most humane literary voices.

Acclaimed as “one of the most humane, honest, liberating works of our time” (The Village Voice), The Hidden Wound is a book-length essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry’s personal experience, he explains how remaining passive in the face of the struggle of racism further corrodes America’s great potential. In a quiet and observant manner, Berry opens up about how his attempt to discuss racism is rooted in the hope that someday the historical wound will begin to heal. Pulitzer prize-winning author Larry McMurtry calls this “a profound, passionate, crucial piece of writing . . . Few readers, and I think, no writers will be able to read it without a small pulse of triumph at the temples: the strange, almost communal sense of triumph one feels when someone has written truly well . . . The statement it makes is intricate and beautiful, sad but strong.” 

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID!!!

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.

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.

The National Episcopal Church’s Main Website    

www.episcopalchurch.org

“The work of Your Church: A conversation with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and his Canons”

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/development/work-of-your-church-webinar/

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