Our Approach to Antiracism
At Interwoven Congregations, we believe there are four key steps that individuals and congregations can take to promote racial justice and healing. It isn't a checklist or linear path, but rather a lifelong commitment to live into the ideals we hold as people of faith and citizens for a society that is just, inclusive, and rooted in mutual respect and love.
Understand Systemic Racism
Personal expressions of racism are vile and wounding. But one-to-one acts of individual prejudice are not responsible for the elevated infant mortality rate afflicting families of color. Or the mass incarceration of black men. Or the wealth gap between whites and people of color. That is the work of systemic, structural racism. And left alone, it will perpetuate, if not expand, the inequalities born out of slavery
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and Jim Crow. Understanding that is an essential first step in our work for racial justice. We believe that faith communities have a special calling and capacity to engage in this civic reckoning. Checkout the Congregational Toolkit for resources to help your congregation do just that.
Build Relationships Across the Divide of Race
Rev. Chuck Booker (Bethesda Presbyterian) and Elder Tony Nixon (Faith Presbyterian)
The work of racial justice begins with each of us looking inside our own hearts. But if we’re to uproot systemic racism in our society, we need to build relationships across the divide of race. Such relationships have the power to further open our hearts and minds; disarm the racial biases which are within each of us; and give us an even greater stake in this work
for racial justice and healing as we move from the conceptual and general to the personal and the particular. Interwoven Congregations helps faith communities develop relationships across the racial divide – on an individual one-to-one basis, with other community groups, and through partnerships with other faith communities with a different racial composition. The Congregational Toolkit and Interwoven Congregations Network are potent tools to foster relationships across the racial divide.
Take Action against Systemic Racism
Deepening our understanding of racism and building relationships across the barrier of race are key. Too often, however, this is where our efforts end. But neither our enhanced knowledge nor the one-to-one relationships we forge across the racial divide will by themselves eradicate the inequities that have been baked into our society over five centuries. So Interwoven Congregations works with congregations to identify ways they can help uproot systemic racism within their own faith communities, in their immediate community and in society at large. Learn more in the Congregational Toolkit and through the Interwoven Network!
Sustaining Ourselves in the Work
