Racial Reconciliation Design Team

The Annual Conference, districts, and local congregations within South Carolina are becoming more diverse; and racism has been a systemic and personal problem within the US and The United Methodist Church (UMC) and its predecessor denominations since their  inceptions. United Methodist Christians, like the rest of God’s human family, represent many races, colors, cultures, languages, backgrounds and life experiences. The South Carolina Annual Conference is committed to the eradication of racism.

The Rev. John Culp made a motion during the Connectional Ministries report Tuesday of the 2014 Annual Conference that the Emerging Ministry budget line use funds to create a task force and host two one-day conferences in 2015 to address racial prejudice and injustice as a theological and missional imperative in local churches and communities.

The original motion calls for two conferences to be held—one at Wofford College and one at Claflin University—and for all clergy and at least one layperson from the local church to attend the conferences. Each pastor would also report at their charge conference what is being done in the local church and community toward racial reconciliation and justice, or set specific goals.

In support of his motion, Culp told the body he remembered when he came into the conference 45 years ago and witnessed the merger of the two conferences: one predominantly white and the other African-American. While we have made much progress since then, he said, “Racism still exists in our churches and our society.”

The Rev. Hayes Gainey, pastor of Edisto Fork UMC, Orangeburg, and others questioned the referral to Connectional ministry because of past performance in this area.  The Connectional Ministries Convener Cynthia Williams informed the body she was confident Connectional Ministries has created an environment where they are able to act capably on things that come before them. There was more discussion Read:

Connectional Ministries to handle race reconciliation proposal

By Jessica Connor. Connectional Ministries will take the reins of a new proposal to cultivate racial reconciliation in S.C. United Methodist churches.

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Two weeks after annual conference the executive body of The Connectional ministry established an intentionally small, racially d diverse team, with the specific goals of  1) Creating a model by the fall meeting to deal with the intent of the conference motion. 2) to find a way to further the conversations in the Annual Conference around the sins of Racism. Rev. Amiri  B. Hooker (See Bio)  was selected as chair of the newly formed S.C. read the article Conference Racial Reconciliation Design Team. 

Racial reconciliation team plans ‘healing pilgrimages.’

By Jessica Connor. When it comes to racism in South Carolina, it’s less a matter of frustration and tension and more a matter of deep pain and sadness—about years upon years of strife, discrimination, disrespect and far worse. So says the Rev. Amiri Hooker, chair of the newly formed S.C. Conference Racial Reconciliation Design Team, whose group has discerned that this pain is the root of most of the racial issues facing South Carolina today, and if we can get to the heart of that pain and seek conversation and understanding, true healing can begin.

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After reading “A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion,” by Trevor Hudson, the design team felt the conference could best cultivate compassion and understanding about racism if they made pilgrimages together, visiting some of these racially significant sites firsthand and dialoguing about the issues and pain.

These pilgrimages are for every congregation—African-American, Caucasian, Korean, Latino and Native American—should participate.

The Racial Reconciliation Design Team decided to organize healing pilgrimages to significant locations in South Carolina’s racial history. The Concept of pilgrimage is to go and become a part, instead of just another meeting at another location, the team wants people to actually go to places (of racial significance) to say, This is what happened here; this is part of our racial legacy in South Carolina.”  Our hopes are that participants will then ask, and begin to answer the question, of “How do we begin to unravel and unmask racial issues around this location.” A words about how our own pilgrimage changed the conversations in our own group could be helpful here

The long-term goal is to create healing and encouragement by taking pilgrimages to these sacred locations a v  cross the conference and, therefore, lead to equipping and supporting leadership to eradicate racism.  

In October this year, on the campus of South Carolina State University The Racism Reconciliation Design Team, set up an event with the staff of S.C. State University to create a pilgrimage destination that allowed us to have the conversation about one of the sorrowful moments in state and national history. We developed a Racial Reconciliation Pilgrimage around the Orangeburg Massacre. The Orangeburg Massacre refers to the shooting of protesters by South Carolina Highway Patrol Officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina near South Carolina State University on the evening of February 8, 1968.^[1] The approximately 150 protestors were demonstrating against racial segregation at a local bowling alley. Three of the protestors, African American males, were killed and twenty-eight other protestors were injured.

Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 brings to light one of the bloodiest tragedies of the Civil Rights era after four decades of deliberate denial.  

The RRDT looked at how an act of racism—in a South Carolina town across from a major United Methodist Church on a campus that has produced so many leaders in our church led to one of the most wretched days in the history of South Carolina and a 40 year cover-up and campaign of misinformation by the governor and state government.

When we arrived on the S.C. State campus we jumped right into the discussion of the massacre and saw a presentation by Bobby Eaddy student protester who was wounded during the massacre. Eaddy told how it felt to be there during the time and the pain he felt from the betrayal of his state, community, and church in the cover-up. Eaddy said all the students were unarmed and in retreat from the highway patrolmen at the time of the shooting.

The Racism Reconciliation Design Team at S.C. State University also met with Dr. Cleveland Sellers who told his story of persecution and being banned from Orangeburg for years. Cleveland Sellers, Jr.  is the current president of Voorhees College, and a veteran civil rights activist who helped lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was the only person convicted and jailed for events at the Orangeburg Massacre.

However, one of the key conversations we experienced was a campus staff member who related her personal stress, year-to-year during the commemorations of the massacre, of getting people to understand the needs for healing from the pain.

We had some great facilitated discussions led by Tan Kirby Davis, founder and lead consultant for The Kirby Resource Group, www.kirbyresourcegroup.com,  a consulting and training organization that specializes in organizational effectiveness, leadership development, diversity and inclusion and community relations. We discussed how there are places in South Carolina that from one side of the tracks might as well be in Ferguson, Mo.—just as strange, just as uncomfortable, just as much another world, just as full of suffering and strangers and fellow believers and “angels unawares,” and just as significant for our learning what it means to be Christian.

These Pilgrimages to Racial Reconciliation are going to change the church. The RRDT group knows that the model will work because members of the group have already been change as we have been developing the model. And as we change the way we talk about the pain and the hope that comes from conversation around racism as pilgrims and learners, these events will create partnerships between persons from across the conference in different ages, races and classes.

Pilgrimage to Racial Reconciliation explores racism, tragedy in Orangeburg Massacre

By the Rev. Amiri Hooker. Have you ever been on a trip, to an event or had an experience that changed your life? When I was in middle school I went to Youth Annual Conference, and the interaction at YAC with youth on fire celebrating the love of Christ moved me toward a life of full-time ministry. In October this year, on the campus of South Carolina State University, I had a similar experience.

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The RRDT also hopes to use other methods of fulfilling its role as a resource for creating strategy and programs that educates and supports systemic and personal changes to end racism and work multiculturally. One example of this type of processing is building new bridges for racial healing and unity by going to see movies like Selma and having groups of clergy and laity earn more about the History of South Carolina and Racism in general. 

‘Selma’ helps build bridge to racial healing in SC

By Jessica Brodie. South Carolina United Methodists are using the movie “Selma” to build new bridges for racial healing and unity. Churches across the state are seeing the movie en masse or teaming up with other-race congregations to see it, then holding honest and prayerful discussions together about what it means to them, how we view race today and how we can move forward as Christians together.

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Another is to develop and place on the conference website information for local congregations to begin the process of looking at how they have conversations about and around issues of race. 

IT STARTS WITH YOU: RACE, RACISM & RELIGION

Reflection circles create the space for a group to have a shared, comfortable opportunity to talk more openly with each other about their own personal experiences. This three-part exercise allows participants to cover the important topics of race, racism, and religion in a supportive reflection circle environment. 

Click here to download this resource.

Lastly, we see the work of eradicating Racism in the annual conference as more then the work of a task force set up following a very specific motion made on the floor of the Annual Conference. We trust the work of the United Methodist Church in this Area. The General Commission on Religion and Race was created by The United Methodist Church in 1968 to address the turbulent and exciting unrest, disease, hope and new possibilities unleashed as legalized racial segregation and separation were being dismantled in church and society.

The Commission was the vehicle through which the denomination invited white people and people of color to a common table to tackle institutional racism, engage in new conversations about what a truly desegregated and global church could look like, and chart a course for living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a more authentic and all-people-embracing way.

Thus we suggest that the work begun under the Task force entitled the Racism Reconciliation Design Team RRDT be located under the Advocacy Ministry Area in the in the Board of Religion and Race and that the members of the committee be given the ability to serve as a members of the Board of Religion and Race as persons with particular needed resources. We also asked that following the initial two years that the Conference Connectional Ministry team provided funding for the work of this group to deal with the issues of eradicating racism and following the current trends of the work or The General Commission on Religion and Race to provide resources for congregations and church leaders to increase: Intercultural Competency, Institutional Equity and Vital Conversations.