Reflections on the Atlanta Conversations by Ms. Pamela Nolan Young

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I, Pamela Nolan Young, of Holy Trinity in South Bend, Indiana, and the Reverend T.J. Freeman of Trinity, Fort Wayne, Indiana joined more than 85 priests and lay Episcopal members at a conference on racial reconciliation convened by the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing in March.  The attendance numbers required the event take place at two larger churches in Midtown Atlanta. The opening night dinner and reception were held at St. Luke's Episcopal Church.  All Saints was host to the discussion the following day. 

The Center under the direction of Dr. Catherine Meeks, is charged with assisting the wider church with tools and resources that allow the Episcopal Church and other faith communities to engage in the work of dismantling racism through education, dialogue, pilgrimage, spiritual formation, and prayer.  The participants gathered to share what they were doing in their respective dioceses and explore ways we can work together. Father Freeman and I joined in group discussions that identified strengths, best practices, and opportunities as well as challenges.  The groups documented their conversations. Those summaries will be further refined at the Center for distribution to the wider church.  All participants were asked to visit the Center's web page to complete an online form that will become a searchable database.

I was honored to represent the diocese and was delighted to meet others committed to this work as Dr. Meeks states this is the work of salvation.  I am employed by the University of Notre Dame as the Director of Academic Diversity and Inclusion  My role at the university is to assist it with its efforts to be a welcoming and inclusive community.  This trip enabled me to mix business with pleasure.  The connections with other participants will enhance the work I do at Notre Dame and enable me to assist our diocese. I was particularly pleased to learn about the best practices that others had shared. I was proud to be able to share some of the practices from our Diocese such as the Soup after School program at Holy Trinity and the hiring of the Adrien Niyongabo to work on Community Asset Building.  

I am an African American woman who was born in the south.  I can recall KKK marches near my grandparents' hometown in North Alabama. My life history is punctuated with positive and negative stories about race: a great uncle who was killed for interracial dating; entering first grade as one of three African Americans to integrate Girard Elementary School; and a friendship with a Caucasian classmate that extended into junior high school when her parents bravely allowed her to attend a sleepover at my house. I was raised Baptist but converted and was confirmed an Episcopalian in my early thirties.  I was drawn to the Episcopal church not because it had all the answers, but because it seemed to be asking the right questions.  My church at the time of my confirmation was Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, Massachusetts.  I recall vividly look up into the pulpit and seeing a variety of races, ages, and genders among our priests and deacons and thinking this is what God's people are supposed to look like.

I can think of no greater task for the church to tackle than that of racial reconciliation. Our nation's ability to so easily adopt policies that pit us as humans against other humans based on difference is in my opinion ungodly.  So I am thrilled to be a part of the local and national conversation in our church and I truly believe our efforts will bear fruit.  I know this work is not easy, it is difficult and uncomfortable but oh how sweet the reward.

As Bishop Desmond Tutu said "Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people? " 

- Pamela Nolan Young

Evangelism Matters 2018 - Video Reflections

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16 May 2018

Dear Brothers and Sister in the Episcopal Church in Northern Indiana!

Grace and peace be with you in the Risen and Ascended Lord!

In March of this year we had the privilege of sending three representatives to the Evangelism Matters conference in Cleveland, OH.  Fr Dan Layden and Jordan Trendelmen of St. Alban's, Fort Wayne along with Jonathan Grant of St. Paul's, Mishawaka traveled there on our behalf.  Included in this post are two videos, along with transcripts, offering their reflections on the conference.  Enjoy them!  Hopefully they will lead you to contemplate where/how evangelism fits authentically in your life.

Transcript - 16 May 2018 Evangelism Matters 2018 - Jonathan Grant 

Transcript - 16 May 2018 Evangelism Matters 2018 - Fr. Dan Layden & Jordan Trendelmen

Blessings,
- Doug

Pilgrimage: Indiana Lynchings included in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

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A few weeks ago, readers of the New York Times may have noticed a rather moving article about the opening of a new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Birmingham, Alabama.  The museum is dedicated to the victims of white supremacy in the United States, and its centerpiece is:

a grim cloister, a walkway with 800 weathered steel columns, all hanging from a roof. Etched on each column is the name of an American county and the people who were lynched there, most listed by name, many simply as “unknown.” The columns meet you first at eye level, like the headstones that lynching victims were rarely given. But as you walk, the floor steadily descends; by the end, the columns are all dangling above, leaving you in the position of the callous spectators in old photographs of public lynchings.

We've been talking recently in the Racial Reconciliation Reading Group about the spiritual benefits of going on pilgrimage to sites where significant events have taken place.  Often a visit to such a place can increase our sense of ownership and engagement with the very real people who were involved in such events. In some cases, our response is inspiration; in others, repentance.

If, like me, you wondered whether this new museum might be an appropriate pilgrimage site, you may have wondered whether it focused on the South alone or also took into consideration more than a dozen lynchings that took place here in Indiana. Would a visit to the Birmingham museum call us to repentance or simply reinforce the illusion that racial violence is just a Southern problem? The beginnings of answers to such questions may be found in another article that appeared in the Indianapolis Star and for which our own Bill Munn (Gethsemane, Marion) was interviewed. That article also mentions the Black Halocaust Museum in Milwaukee, which closed its physical doors in 2008 but continues its life as a virtual museum online.

Conversations are currently underway regarding the possibility of a pilgrimage to Birmingham—stay tuned!

 

 

Grateful to receive a Roanridge Trust Grant!

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In January, Missioners Terri, Adrien, and Michelle submitted an application to the Roanridge Trust for a grant to dive more deeply into our Becoming #Beloved Community initiative.  Roanridge is specifically designed to provide training programs for church leadership in small-town and rural areas, on various topics (as designed by the grant requestor), while giving special attention to the Five Marks of Mission:

  1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

  2. To teach, baptize, and nurture new believers

  3. To respond to human need by loving service

  4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society

  5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Our EDNIN grant application grew out of our Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) initiative, which allowed us to hire Missioner Adrien Niyongabo (thanks to a 2017 United Thank Offering grant!).  Missioner Adrien spent his first eight months with the Episcopal Church in Northern Indiana sharing the concepts of ABCD and listening deeply to the various faith communities he visited.  These fruitful conversations have revealed a deeper need for healing, for reconciliation, in our communities as a whole.

The Roanridge Trust grant, administered through the Domestic and Foreign Mission Society, will allow us to develop training for our clergy and lay leaders so that they can create a process for Becoming #Beloved Community that is specific to their own contexts. Maybe this means more reading groups, or deeper conversations around sharing our stories of reconciliation and healing.  Maybe we will utilize the concepts of Becoming #Beloved Community and customize them for our context in ways we haven't dreamed of yet!  We are THRILLED and HONORED to have received this vote of confidence and to have this opportunity.  

Stay tuned for more details this summer!  Thank you Roanridge.

What is Project Resource 2.0: An Update from Camp Allen in Texas

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Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Episcopal Church in Northern Indiana!

Grace and peace be with you in Jesus, the Risen Christ!

Last week, I had the privilege of gathering with bishops, priests, deacons and lay persons from 20 dioceses throughout the Episcopal Church to rekindle our passion for the important work of stewardship and its essential role in the life of our faith communities.  This initiative is entitled Project Resource 2.0 and is sponsored by the College for Bishops, the Episcopal Church Foundation and the Development Office of the Episcopal Church.  For several years in Northern Indiana, we have had a group of people called Faithful Stewards, who have tried to encourage the work of Stewardship among us!  I want to thank Linda Buskirk (Trinity - Fort Wayne), Meg Moss (Christ the King - Huntington), Pamela Harris (St. Andrew's - Valparaiso), Chuck Lewis and Steve Wilson (St. Andrew - Kokomo) , Fr. Paul Nesta (St. Paul - LaPorte) and Bishop Frank Gray for committing themselves to participating in this conference AND bringing it back to share throughout our diocese. 

The initiative focuses on three areas of stewardship:  1) the Annual Pledge Drive; 2) Planned or Legacy Giving and 3) Capital Campaigns.

You will be hearing more about our learning and our hopes in assisting every faith community in Northern Indiana to embrace more and more intentionally to important work of stewardship in all its aspects!   In the meantime, please enjoy the video below, recorded at the end of our time together.

Easter blessings,
Doug

March For Our Lives - March 24th 2018

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Included in this post is an invitation from Dean Brian Grantz to join us in a March For Our Lives on March 24th at one of two locations.  Please prayerfully consider how you would like to be part of this youth-inspired movement.
***** ***** *****

Greetings, Dear Colleagues in Ministry.

There is a ground-swell of activity being initiated by young people in the wake of the horrific Ash Wednesday shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On Saturday, March 24, rallies will be held in Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, and many other US cities to demand action in the face of an ongoing epidemic of gun violence. I suspect, along with many others, that this is a critical moment in our national dialogue, so with the blessing of Bishop Sparks, I began investigating the possibility of coordinating participation from our Diocese in these rallies, particularly - but not exclusively - among Senior High youth and young adults.

I feel compelled to say - at the risk of preaching - that while we tend to debate our epidemic of violence as a gun issue along well-trod partisan lines, I believe violence is a profoundly human problem that is exponentially exacerbated by guns. That's a thornier conversation, to be sure, but avoidance of it is killing our children, and countless more besides. There are no easy answers or simple solutions - regardless of how many memes pop up on Facebook suggesting otherwise - and the full spectrum of opinions on the nature of the problem and what should be done about it is likely present in every one of our congregations. But in this moment I simply ask who, if not the Church, is called to stand with those whose hearts are inclined to keep the law "Thou shalt do no murder" as a fundamental tenet of our society? Our presence, our witness as disciples of Jesus, is monumentally important.

The current details are as follows:

Washington, D.C. - Register here.

Dean Brian Grantz invites Northern Indiana Episcopalians to rally in Washington DC on Saturday, March 24, 2018. Interested high school students, young adults, and others are invited to stand with the youth of our nation against an epidemic of gun violence. We will depart from South Bend at 7 am on Friday, March 23, making stops along the toll road in Elkhart and Angola as necessary to gather our group. We will arrive in Washington in time for a prayer service on Friday evening at Washington National Cathedral, then go off to churches and hotels (as the group decides) for overnight accommodations. We will attend the rally in Washington, then follow a group-determined itinerary for our overnight stay, Palm Sunday worship, and return home on Sunday. Space is limited. Please register through Eventbrite so we may determine interest in traveling to Washington. Questions? Contact Dean Brian Grantz at dean@stjamessouthbend.org.

Indianapolis - Register here. 

Bishop Doug & Dana Sparks, Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of Indianapolis, and Bishop Bill Gafkjen of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the ELCA invited all interested Episcopalians, Lutherans, and friends to the March for Our Lives rally in Indianapolis on Saturday, March 24, 2018. Northern Indiana faith communities may organize groups or encourage individuals to stand with the youth of our nation against an epidemic of gun violence. We will gather at St. Andrew Church, Kokomo for pre-event prayers and ride sharing coordination at 7:30 am before departing for Indianapolis at 8:30 am. Overnight accommodation is available upon request at St. Andrew Church or at local hotels in Kokomo. Please register participants through Eventbrite so we may coordinate our presence at the rally. Questions? Contact Mrs. Tracy Rose-Love at edninmarchindy@yahoo.com.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Thank you so much for your leadership and ministry.

Brian
-- 
The Very Rev. Brian G. Grantz
The Cathedral of Saint James
South Bend, Indiana

Called to Beloved Community: Episcopalians and Lutherans Working Together

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Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Grace and peace be with you in Jesus, the Light for all People!

I want to share a video with you describing an ecumenical initiative with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), one of our Full Communion Partners.  In 2015, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church called us to focus on Racial Reconciliation and Racial Justice.  To that end, an initiative was developed entitled, Becoming #Beloved Community.  I shared this material with you in early November and invited us through the Advent season to engage in conversations throughout Northern Indiana, using the resources provided by the wider Church.  We had four conversations during Advent in Gary, Marion, South Bend and Fort Wayne.  These conversations offered insight and wisdom as we listened to one another's stories of race in our communities and churches.

By God's Providence, we came into Full Communion with our Lutheran sisters and brothers in 2000, adopting a working framework entitled, "Called to Common Mission."  Since my election as your bishop, I have reached out to my colleague in the ELCA, Bishop Bill Gafkjen, who serves as Bishop of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod, in hopes of living more fully and practically into our full communion relationship.  Beginning in September, Bishop Bill and Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows, the new Episcopal Bishop of Indianapolis, and I have been meeting regularly to again seek ways to live more fully and practically into our full communion relationship.  After prayerful discussion and at the invitation of our wider churches, we decided to embrace "Becoming #Beloved Community," as our first ecumenical initiative throughout Indiana.

The video is an initial conversation describing our hopes for this initiative.  We want to engage in StorySharing...which is "a practice that allows everyone to seek, name, and celebrate the loving presence of Jesus in our lives."  We realize that some of us may engage this process with some fear and trepidation.  But it is our hope that, in our sharing and listening, we may practice love, forgiveness and mercy.

As bishops, we have committed ourselves to identifying areas of our diocese or synod, to begin this process.  In Northern Indiana, I would like to begin this ecumenical initiative in Gary, South Bend and Fort Wayne.  Dates and locations for the StorySharing experience will be shared as soon as they are finalized.

I invite you to begin praying for this ecumenical initiative among Lutherans and Episcopalians in Indiana.  I also invite your reflections, suggestions and insights into the particular and practical ways we might walk together toward Becoming #Beloved Community.

Every blessing,
Doug Sparks
Bishop

“Racial Justice and Your Congregation”

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Bishop Sparks attended the “Racial Justice and Your Congregation” workshop offered yesterday by the Center for Congregations. Here are his Facebook comments:

“Grateful for the Center for Congregations...especially for the conference today entitled “Racial Justice and Your Congregation”...also grateful for my sisters, Cynthia Moore from St. Andrew’s Valparaiso, Katherine Hadow from St. Christopher’s Crown Point and Judy Gabrys, Patricia Hamilton and Harriet Rincon from St. Timothy’s Griffith. Becoming #Beloved Community!”
— https://www.facebook.com/ednin.org/

 

 

Discussion Questions for Chapter 3 of No Innocent Bystanders

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Craigo-Snell, Shannon and Christopher Doucot. No Innocent Bystanders: Becoming an Ally in the Struggle for Justice. Louisville, Presbyterian Publishing: 2017.

February 8, 2018—Chapter 3: Resources for Being an Ally

1. What did you think about Doucot and Craigo-Snell’s description of anger as an expression of hope? What work might you need to do in order to accommodate such an understanding of anger? What beliefs or practices might you need to adjust? 

 

2. the Rev. Dr. Lewis Brogdon remarks that “It is hard to get allies to even acknowledge that they have a lot of homework to do.” Craigo-Snell and Doucot go on to name some of that homework:

As allies, we must begin by learning about the day-to-day experiences of people who are not in the dominant culture. We must learn how interactions with the police unfold when the person pulled over is African American. We must learn about the obstacles faced by LGBTQ adolescents. We have to, in effect, relearn the world. (77)

What homework do each of us have to do? What opportunities do we have to test our understanding of this homework? How might we adjust our selections as a reading group in order to help us to this homework and testing?

 

3. Doucot and Craigo-Snell explore the intersection between humility and prudence by saying that:

If the largest part of prudence is to “get our cousins” rather than attempting to “save” those who are oppressed, another part is discerning when the privilege afforded us as members of dominant communities can be leveraged in support of marginalized groups. While allies should not seek the spotlight, it would be foolish to miss an opportunity if we are already in one. (82)

Who are your “cousins”? Where is your “spotlight”?

 

4. In exploring the virtue of temperance, Craigo-Snell and Doucot observe that:

White people often advocate organizing without realizing that this means some people must be willing to be organized. Or, more likely, without imagining themselves in the role of “organized” rather than “organizer.” Following the leadership of marginalized groups has proved so difficult for allies that an unfortunate philosophy of allyship has emerged that emphasizes the need for allies to “take leadership” from organizers from within the marginalized group with which they are allied. (89-90)

When have you found yourself wanting to organize folks who are unwilling to be organized. What motivations might they have had for resisting your well-meant attempts?

Calling Out Casual Racism

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If there's anything that really bothers an Episcopalian, it's the possibility that we're being rude (and yes, I would include using the wrong fork in this category!). So when it comes to calling out our friends and family when we see them engaging in microagression, we find ourselves in a bind: do we violate our "never criticize another person in public" policy or do we let the moment pass in silence, thereby appearing to condone the behavior?

What's microagression, you ask? Microagression is a casual, indirect, and sometimes unintentional act of discrimination. Because microagression often is practiced through condescension, the perpetrator may intend to be kind. That makes calling out the microagressor that much more difficult. Luvvie Ajayi addresses microagression in the Ted Ideas Interview, "Why We Need to Call Out Casual Racism."

In reading Ajayi's interview, I am reminded that we speak of Jesus the one who for our sake was made to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Perhaps this Lent, we likewise need to practice becoming "rude" so as to participate in the greater courtesy of God. 

Discussion Questions for Chapter 2 of No Innocent Bystanders

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Craigo-Snell, Shannon and Christopher Doucot. No Innocent Bystanders: Becoming an Ally in the Struggle for Justice. Louisville, Presbyterian Publishing: 2017.

February 8, 2018—Chapter 2: "Getting Ready to Be an Ally"

1. Craigo-Snell and Doucot are a Presbyterian and a Roman Catholic respectively. Does their account of sin as “not a negative evaluation of humanity but rather a positive affirmation that we have a God-given vocation to love” match up with what you have been taught to believe about sin and/or what you have actually come to believe? How does their account change the way you think about conversations you’ve been in with regard to race?

2. Doucot and Craigo-Snell describe humanity’s “large-scale make-missing” as a condition in which:

As we grow and develop within such fallen human communities, we are shaped and influenced by them. We learn their prejudices, imbibe their violence, and take on their misshapen values. By the time we are able to make free, individual, moral choices, we do so badly. Our freedom is compromised by our cultural conditioning, our individual choices take place in contexts determined by the larger society, our options are limited by unjust social structures, and even our moral compasses have been poorly calibrated in our sinful world. We retain our individual agency—our capacity to act—yet we are also bound by original sin. (60)

In what way and to what extent does this account tell the story of your own experience of systemic racism? In what way and to what extent does this account fit with your theology of baptism as a sacrament through which God cleanses us from original sin?

3 In what way have you experienced the difference between confessing sin and admitting guilt (62) in your own experience of racism?

4. Where and how do you find yourself called to deploy creativity and faith in “deciding how we go about repairing our societal structures”? (69)

A Journey Towards Becoming Beloved Community with Bishops Bill, Doug, and Jennifer

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Bishop Bill Gafken of the Indiana-Kentuck Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis, and Bishop Doug Sparks of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana gather to discuss Becoming Beloved Community, a journey of Racial Reconciliation.

Bishop Bill Gafken of the Indiana-Kentuck Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis, and Bishop Doug Sparks of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana gather to discuss Becoming Beloved Community, a journey of Racial Reconciliation.