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.
The Presbyterian Office of Public Witness issued a statement Monday decrying racism against Asian Americans and calling for acts of hate against them to stop.
Born in 1946, the Rev. Nibs Stroupe, now retired after serving for 34 years at the intercultural Oakhurst Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia, grew up “in a totally segregated society” in Helena, Arkansas. He said he saw Black folk “all the time” while growing up, but “they didn’t feel like people” until he did some work in Brooklyn, New York as a young adult.
The very public way the apostle Peter is called out by Paul in Paul’s letter to the Galatians offers modern-day readers a model for confronting racism for the sake of the gospel.
A nearly hour-long plenary to cap the second week of the Intercultural Transformation Workshops focused on the pain and trauma clergy and lay people alike have been carrying for the past six months during the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice, including the killings of African Americans at the hands of police and Wednesday’s grand jury decision on the role of police in the killing of Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13 in her apartment.
Through plenary and breakout sessions — and by listening to Presbyterians who are making strides toward building intercultural faith communities — the 2020 Intercultural Transformation Workshops got underway Saturday with about 90 people aboard virtually.
The vision for the Matthew 25 invitation asks us to engage together in the three works of vitalizing congregations, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty. Though individual, these three works are inseparable. Can a congregation be vital without confronting racism? What is at stake when racism directs our congregational and community life?
A recent morning worship service at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville opened with a powerful beat of the djembe, a West African drum, played by the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, coordinator of the Self-Development of People ministry for the Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA).
Worshipers at the Presbyterian Center Chapel created their version of the Wailing Wall Wednesday, repenting from racism and committing to embark on the new life promised by Jesus in the gospels.
