Racial Justice

• Doctrine of Discovery PCUSA resources

• Native American Coordinating Council Support

• Call to Action on Behalf of Indigenous People

Murder at the Mission by Blaine Harden

Anxious to Talk About It by Carol Helsel.

Be The Bridge by Latasha Morrison.

1. Christianity Today, White Evangelicals Need to Humble Themselves by Efrem Smith, Co-Pastor of Bayside Church Midtown, CA and Co-owner of Influential LLC. Smith declares, “Allow the church that has been deemed the other, the marginalized church, to be the teacher at this moment, and to have the most dominant form of the church in America be the student who is learning to share power.

2. DisGRACE: The Church Addresses Racism by Irene Pak Lee, associate pastor at stone Church of Willow glen in san José, California and Mindy Douglas, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Durham, north Carolina. In a portion of the Presbyterian Woman’s Horizons publication, Lee and Douglas write about their experiences of the DisGRACE conference at Montreat in 2016 in which the topic of structural racism was explored. Lee writes her portion to people of color, Douglas writes her portion to white people.

3. Religion News Service - Chicago Preacher Otis Moss III Uses Film to Honor Ahmaud Arbery, Address Racism. An interview with Otis Moss III, senior pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, founder of Unashamed Media Group, and recently named as one of the Top 12 Most Effective Preachers in the English-Speaking world. The interview discusses Moss’s 22-minute film, The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery, which was shown during worship last month at their church and then quickly went viral.

4. Christian Century - Ten Myths White People Believe about Racism by Carolyn Helsel, preaching professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

5. Fuller Studio - Black and White by Teesha Hadra, executive pastor at Church of the Resurrection in Los Angeles, and John Hambrick, Presbyterian pastor and ministry leader at Buckhead Church in Atlanta, Georgia. The story of an unlikely friendship and the insights learned therein.

6. Christianity Today - How to Talk to your Kids about Race by Michelle Reyes, PhD, is a German professor, pastor’s wife, and mom. Her writings on issues of faith, family, and diversity have been published in Flourish and Austin Moms Blog as well as on her devotional web site, The Art of Taleh. Michelle helped plant Church of the Violet Crown in Austin, Texas—an urban, multicultural church where her husband serves as lead pastor.

7. Mockingbird - The Jeffersonian Ideal and the Unexpected Solution to Racism by Ethan Richardson, contributing staff member for Mockingbird and ministry leader at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA. Richardson writes, “It takes something like cancer to implode all the stories about ourselves (and our cultural Others) we spend so much time reinforcing.”

8. Presbyterian Outlook - Witness Now, Before it is Too Late by Brian Blount, president and professor of New Testament at Union Presbyterian Seminary. A statement issued on May 31, 2020.

9. Christianity Today - A Christian Response to Racism in the Year of Coronavirus by Allen Yeh, Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies & Missiology at Biola University, Cook School of Intercultural Studies.

10. Loving Life Blog - this blog re-posts an article called Everything I Learned about Reconciliation I Learned in the Church by Christena Cleveland, social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the recently-launched Center for Justice + Renewal. She tells the story of a church that practiced racial reconciliation well.

11. PCUSA - Facing Racism: A Vision of the Intercultural Community, The PCUSA’s Churchwide Anti-Racism Policy as approved at the 2016 General Assembly.

12. Christianity Today - Ahmaud Arbery and the Trauma of Being a Black Runner by Danté Stewart, writer and preacher studying at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

13. Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s 1963 classic exposition - philosophically and theologically - on the urgency of justice.

14. Baylor University Center for Christian Ethics - The Persistent Problem by Michael Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Emerson explores the competing ways that white and black people often define racism.

1. Duke University - Paying Privilege Forward, a talk by Christena Cleveland, social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the recently-launched Center for Justice + Renewal. She talks about education inequalities that exist and how to dismantle that.

2. MLK50 and The Gospel Coalition Conference - The Most Segregated Hour in America, a 2018 sermon by Charlie Dates, Senior Pastor of Progressive Baptist Church, Chicago, IL and Affiliate Professor at Trinity Evangelical Seminary. A powerful call for the church to be about the work of both righteousness and justice\ - and most fundamentally to love one another.

3. TED Talk - The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author. Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

1. Fuller Studio Podcast - Dwight Radcliff on Black Pain, an interview with Dr. Radcliff, assistant provost for the William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He speaks about the systems of oppression and generational trauma that plague Black communities and challenges the church to own a theology that responds rightly to

suffering rather than dismissing it.

2. Fuller Studio Podcast - On Race and the American Church, interview with Jermar Tisby, President of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, and author of The Color of Compromise. Tisby discusses the history of racial inequality in the United States and in the American church.

3. Scene on Radio Podcast - Little War on the Prairie. This is Episode 4 in their “Seeing White” series on the history or race and racism in our country. Episode 4 explores a story from Mankato, Minnesota - the site of the largest mass execution in U.S. history, and it may have particular resonance for those (like myself) raised in the Midwest. It also adds context to the history of racism in Minnesota.

4. Fuller Studio Podcast - David Bailey on Reconciliation, an interview with David Bailey, founder and executive director of Arrabon. He shares about his work in racial reconciliation in Richmond, Virginia and the need for the church to repair society’s broken systems.

5. Fuller Studio Podcast - John M. Perkins on Legacy interview with John Perkins, civil rights activist. Perkins speaks on the role of protest in a life of faith and how he supports a new generation of leaders advocating for social change. Here is another one with Perkins, this time on friendship and justice, and the role of passion to shape our lives together.