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Racial Justice
The year was 1903. The crowd was gathered on a street in Wilmington, Delaware. A Black man named George White had been arrested on charges of assaulting and killing a white girl. The man orating was a Presbyterian pastor named Robert Elwood. The mob broke into George White’s holding cell, dragged him out, then beat, hacked and burned him to death [a documentary about the lynching of George White, “In the Dead Fire’s Ashes,” directed by Stephen Labovsky, debuted at the Wilmington Film Festival in spring 2005].
The Rev. Dennis C. Benson, a retired Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor who estimates he’s interviewed 15,000 people over a career that’s spanned six decades — everyone from fellow PC(USA) clergy member Fred Rogers to Alice Cooper — was presented a Special Wilbur Award Friday by the Religion Communicators Council.
An HBO documentary producer and the editor of an African American periodical offered cautionary advice Thursday about how to engage in authentic storytelling about marginalized groups, such as African Americans and Muslims.
Over the past year about 3,800 hate attacks were recorded against Asian Americans. According to research by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, attacks increased by 150% in 2020.
The first day of Compassion, Peace and Justice Training Days planted seeds of thought about the evils of colonization, capitalism and individualism and their effects on the planet.
On the eve of its one-year anniversary, “Just Talk Live” took on the topic of AAPI hate, with a trio of guests who affirmed that racism against Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders is nothing new and that the church has a role to play in stopping it.
These days, every organization is coming up with a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — commonly referred to as DEI — strategic plan. The hiring of diversity and inclusion executives has grown 113% in the last five years. As of February 2021, half of S&P 500 companies have a chief diversity officer. The national agencies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are also putting together DEI plans as a response to the General Assembly mandate for a Race Audit in 2018. However, this is not the church jumping on the latest business trend.
Each year there is spirited discussion in the media about the nominations for the Oscars. This year, though the movie schedule was terribly disrupted by the pandemic, is no different.
The objective of this brief reflection is to explore the theological interplay between the Bible and racism. Being an African-Jamaican, I have embraced the Christian faith through Presbyterian missionary Christianity. For me, Scripture centers on being “the Word of the Lord.”
Looking ahead to the April 22-23 meeting of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board, the board’s Coordinating Committee on Friday also looked back to last month’s deadly violence against members of the Asian American Pacific Islander community in and around Atlanta.
