Episcopal Press and News
Peace and Justice Network Targets Racism, Repentance and Reconciliation
Episcopal News Service. December 8, 1993 [93123_Z]
Bob Williams, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Los Angeles
The sin of racism is rooted in the abuse of power, Suffragan Bishop Chester Talton of Los Angeles told the Episcopal Peace and Justice Network's annual conference, November 18-20, in Burlingame, California.
Under the theme "Racism, Repentance and Reconciliation: Attitudes of the Heart," the three-day conference guided 100 participants from all nine provinces of the Episcopal Church through seven major presentations underscoring how the church must fight to eradicate racism.
"Where does [racism] come from?" Talton asked participants in his keynote address. In suggesting an answer to his question, Talton asserted that racism was the result of "the need of some people to demonstrate that they are superior and others are inferior."
"The church is beginning to look in the right place by focusing on 'white privilege,'" Talton added. "Part of the problem with coming to grips with the issue is that we don't know our history," he said, reminding participants that some Episcopalians in past centuries found it acceptable to own slaves. "Unless and until the Episcopal Church faces its dreadful history [of racism], we will never overcome it."
Talton cited hopeful signs that the church is beginning to deal with racism, including the extensive study of the issue by the House of Bishops and its intention to release a pastoral letter on racism, as well as local dialogue, such as a series of multicultural masses planned in the Diocese of Los Angeles.
Participants pledged themselves to launch similar anti-racism initiatives in other dioceses, as stated in a letter drafted at the conference and sent to Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. Participants wrote that they were committing themselves "to work within our dioceses to become more inclusive and acculturated."
"White racism, both institutional and personal, which has been allowed to thrive for too long inside our church...must be addressed at greater length and in terms that associate it with sexism, homophobia and classism so that we can all come to the table with clean hearts and due reverence for God's commandment," the letter to Browning said.
As conference chaplain, the Most Rev. Samir Kafity, president bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, brought a global and historic perspective to the issue of white racism. "I come from the city of Pentecost," Kafity said. "The church was born multiculturally. It wasn't born in Canterbury."
Racism is "an issue around the world," Kafity asserted, reminding participants of the "miracle" of the recent Palestinian-Israeli peace accord in the face of religious and ethnic prejudice in the Middle East.
A similar critique of racism from an international perspective was offered by the Rev. John Kater, associate professor of ministry development at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. Speaking from his experience as a former education officer in the Diocese of Panama, Kater described the rigid segregation of the former Canal Zone and economic tensions between indigenous Central Americans, Afro-Caribbean cultures, Europeans and North Americans.
According to Kater, "the Episcopal Church is implicated" in a troubling history in Central America, accepting the dominant mores of the culture there and acquiescing in segregated churches to racist policies with regard to clergy and lay leadership. "Racism continues to be a significant factor in the life of the Episcopal Church's ninth province, and furthermore a factor which is more serious for being largely denied, and therefore, unaddressed except by Episcopalians of color," Kater said.
In a separate forum, participants discussed the relationship between racism and other forms of oppression in American culture. "We are participating in evil when we deny someone freedom," said the Very Rev. Diana Akiyama, associate dean of Stanford Memorial Church in Menlo Park, California, while drawing vivid parallels between elitism, racism, sexism and homophobia as systems of oppression.
Akiyama underscored the force of violence used by any "class in power" to dominate an underclass group. "To talk about power is to ask who has it and who doesn't and what people do to hold on to it," she said. "[Oppressors] tend to garnish power, control it, hand it out, refuse to share it, and hang on by not ever crossing the line." This was not the pattern of Christ, who invited his disciples to share in his work, setting a collaborative, co-creative pattern for the church, Akiyama asserted.
"Christ was more than happy to say, 'Take this power and give it away,'" Akiyama said. "Unless we commit ourselves to sharing power, we will never transcend racism, sexism and homophobia."
The impact of the conference is "a better understanding of all the cultural groupings that make up the church," said the Rev. Brian Grieves, staff officer for peace and justice ministries at the Episcopal Church Center in New York. He said that the conference provided "hands-on opportunities to explore the implications of racism and to take that knowledge back into local ministries." Grieves pointed out that the conference was held in response to the church's decision at the 1991 General Convention in Phoenix to address racism for three triennia.
Responding to the conference, Cass Watters, a participant from St. Clare's Church in Rancho Cucamonga, California, reiterated the need for action. "We may discuss racism until doomsday," Watters said, "but we are not called to sit on the cross in sackcloth and ashes. We cannot live in guilt," she added. "We are called to move forward as Easter people."