A white youth uses racial insults and aggression towards a Black youth at a diocesan event. What conditions made such an incident possible? What could the historically and predominantly white church have done to prevent it? How should the church respond? And how should the church respond, knowing this has happened before?
The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina considers dismantling racism one of its mission priorities; is actively engaged in discernment about reparations; and offers training, book studies and pilgrimages around racial justice.
And yet structural racism persists in our churches. Of course it does.
White supremacy was built into our society and our churches. So, institutions and churches troubled by this tend to respond with age-segregated, short-term training or programming for individuals. Check! We aren’t racist anymore, or at least we are aware of our racism.
But scholars in the field of Christian education and formation would tell us that episodic, age-segregated transmission of facts does not make someone a Jesus follower. That involves practices, discipline, community and action, among other things. So why do we think we can train people one at a time out of white supremacy?
As a children’s minister, a deacon helping the diocese equip congregations in formation and a member of the diocese’s reparations committee, I am uniquely positioned to imagine a new approach that draws on intergenerational formation (and the dignity and capacity of all members of the body of Christ); Christian practices (which form our communal way of life); and racial equity education (that links individual learning to just and liberative action).