Read some comments from members of our ad hoc task force and hear how they have been affected by the resources they have studied.
“I have begun exploring the readily available Racial Justice Resources and Educational Materials provided on the ELCA website at https://www.elca.org/Resources/Racial-Justice. There are free downloads, inexpensive seminar and full course guidelines, updated fully researched texts, outreach guides for leaders and participant workbooks. Among the resources is a downloadable “Explanation of the Declaration of the ELCA to People of African Descent.” Included under Reports and Social Statements are study guides, resource bibliographies, and assessments of results of previous outreach programs.” Tom Mellon
“How do we reconcile the fact that we elected Barack Obama as a two-term President with the reality that racial justice in our country seems to be going backwards. Clearly, we have a lot of work to do to bring ourselves to being that more perfect union that Lincoln aspired to and MLK dreamed about. Santayana observed that ‘those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it’. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones traces the troubling history of white supremacy in our faith and uses survey data to show how it persists across all faith communities to this day. We have some hard work ahead; this is a good place to start.” John Wittenbraker
“A book that has impacted me greatly is Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Stamped is a comprehensive American history that tells the story of how anti-black racism has been an important part of our history from the early 1600s to the present. Kendi traces the development of racist ideas and their relationship to institutional, social and economic practices during five time periods.” Dick Detwiler
“I recently read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. It was both helpful and horrifying. As a lawyer serving clients on death row, what he experienced was outrageous. That there are people like Bryan who forego high-paying jobs to help those without hope is edifying and enriching.” Barbara Devlin
“Peter Marty (editor/publisher of The Christian Century and senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, IA) wrote an important piece in July that spoke to me, Becoming Less Defensive About White Privilege, in which he writes, ‘We no longer have the luxury of living racially unaware lives. Where you feel uncomfortable, disempower it. Relax into the power of faith. Do some soul-searching. Take what scares the hell out of you about yourself and pick it up, much like that cross Jesus mentions.’” Karen Matthias-Long
“I
recommend ‘Criminal Justice Fact Sheet’ found
at www.NAACP. Org. A
sampling of it includes Origins of Modern Policing, Law Enforcement, Racial
Bias, Penal Labor. Related to these concerns is ‘Black and Blue: A History of
Police Violence in Philadelphia 1830-2020.’ It appeared in the July 12, 2020
edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer.” Lynn Staples
“A book that is important to me is Austin
Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in
a World Made for Whiteness. This book
opened my eyes to how it feels to be African American and the impact of my
sometimes well-intentioned but misguided actions.” Meg Ehm
“I have recently watched ‘Reconstruction: America After the Civil War,’ a four-hour PBS documentary by Henry Louis Gates. Watching it and learning from it has been part of an effort I have been making the past few weeks to better understand the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. This viewing has complemented much of the work I have done the past three years, as a teacher of history, regarding memorials, monuments and cemeteries from America’s twentieth century wars.” Chris Johnson
“I recommend Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. by Lenny Duncan. Formerly incarcerated and African American, Duncan seems like the unlikeliest of pastors. Rather than focusing on shifting demographics and shrinking congregations, Duncan instead draws a direct line between the church’s lack of diversity and its lack of vitality. Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the ELCA. He calls laity and leaders alike to the front lines of church renewal through racial equality and justice.” Norma Nish
“One step I took was to watch ‘13th’ on Netflix, a documentary on racial equality. It presented the 13th Amendment and how it has been twisted allowing racism to go underground and become systemic. I learned about the ‘war on drugs’ and how that became a gateway for incarceration of minorities. It is available on Netflix and worth watching.” Joe Devlin
“The June 26 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Caroline Randall Williams gets my vote. It is entitled ‘You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body is a Confederate Monument.’ Williams, a poet, is Vanderbilt University’s Writer in Residence. The first paragraph of her editorial reads, ‘I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.’ Williams is a great-granddaughter of Edmund Pettus, the late former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon whose name appears on the Alabama bridge where the late and then young John Lewis was beaten during what was intended to be a peaceful civil rights march.” Mark Staples