A Conversation with Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam

Part 2:  The Center for the Repair of Historic Harms of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam delivering a keynote address at the Matthew 25 Regional Summit in October 2024. Photos by Pat Jackson.

Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam is the Ministry Director of the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Rev. Pat Jackson (Interwoven Congregations executive director) and Roxane Rucker (former Interwoven Board member) conducted a series of personal, indepth interviews across 2023 and 2025. This is Part 2 in the three part series.

Rev. Pat Jackson (he/him):  You serve as the founding director for The Center for the Repair of Historic Harms of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  How would you describe the mission and work of the Center?

 Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam (he/him):  The Center for the Repair of Historic Harms serves to grow the number of people being equipped to share the Good news that reparative justice and reparations make common sense for the common good, as soon as possible, and for as long as it takes. The Center for Repair also provides the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) an opportunity to assess the historic harm that it has done to itself, to Indigenous peoples, Afro-Americans, and others in the United States and around the world so that the denomination will have an opportunity to learn what harmed communities say repair and, hopefully, reconciliation require. The Center for the Repair of Historic Harms also serves the denomination as it helps to acknowledge that Presbyterians have contributed to a legacy of oppression and evasion and, to a certain extent, gaslighting where these historic harms are concerned.

In response, the Center for Repair has a dual purpose of acknowledging the specific harms the PC(U.S.A.) has committed and also realizing that—aside from certain harms that the denomination has inflicted on itself—many historical harms are now so far gone that it is impossible for the PC (U.S.A.) to repair those damages alone. For those reasons, repair and reparations are common-sense for the common good. We must pursue those repairs in earnest, both as soon as possible and to continue to work at it with others for as long as it takes to get the work done and move forward to the next set of faithful possibilities that emerge once repair is well underway.

Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam speaking at the 48th biennial conference fo the National Black Presbyterians Caucus. Photo courtesy of PC U.S.A.) Communications.

We have to partner with entities outside of our denomination and even outside of the Christian Church to begin or extend processes by which we can collectively remedy historic harms. And so, when it concerns the Afro-American people of the United States, that means—at this moment—supporting the passage of House Resolution 40, because it takes the resources of the entire federal government to begin to close the racial wealth gap and to prevent future recurrence to the most certain extent possible.

When it comes to the Indigenous nations in the land that we now call the United States, the total demand for repair and reparations is not entirely clear at this moment.  But repair in the context of Indigenous America absolutely involves the institution of sovereign relationships between Indigenous nations and the United States and the resumption of sovereign relations with Indigenous nations both in terms of civil and in criminal matters. And, without a doubt, reparations certainly involves land being returned to Indigenous nations according to a process negotiated between the United States and distinct Indigenous nations.

We are currently in the process of forming an international ecumenical alliance for repair and reparation.  The reason we are establishing a global alliance is because the colonial process was a global process and—although numerous European colonization projects unfolded within the same roughly 500 year period, the damage done is surprisingly unique in relation to distinct historic communities. Christian organizations serious about collective social transformation, taking their inspiration from the Spirit-induced wealth transfers that Acts 2 announces on behalf of the first generation of Christ followers, must engage each station of repair according to the harm that has unfolded in historical time and determine, along with historic communities, what repairs are possible and what procedures are necessary to make those repairs happen in historical time.

Pat:  Wiliam Darity and Kirsten Mullen argue in their influential text “From Here to Equality” that reparations should only happen at the federal level – and that anything else, like what churches might do, is just a distraction and siphons off pressure to make the federal government act.  What do you think of that view?

Jermaine:  This is where I agree and disagree with Darity and Mullen.  I agree that denominations must draw a clean distinction between what local reparative actions can accomplish versus those repairs that require resources the federal government alone can muster. However, it does not make sense for Christian organizations to simply say “we're waiting for the federal government.”  For that reason, the Center for Repair emphasizes that Christian organizations should engage in reparative actions on the local level now because these small-scale reparative actions are a way to build grassroots consensus that creates a groundswell that informs the nation and the world that reparations are not only legitimate, but underway like never before. The public witness produced through visible and collaborative reparative work on the local level—like that now underway in Evanston, Illinois—is not reparations as such in the sense that it contributes directly to ending the transgenerational legacies of Jim Crow legislation and the legal and social cultures of reparations denial even in that municipality.  However, when local reparative work is conducted in a spirit of unity and camaraderie, local work on regional issues can serve to change public opinion so that people experience in the flesh that reparative justice work is good work that finally builds rather than disintegrates diverse and growing U.S. American communities.  

Pat: Jermaine, thank you for this follow up conversation in 2025. Can you give me an update on the work of the Center for the Repair of Historic Harms?   

Jermaine:  The core of our work right now is both international and domestic. On the domestic side, we're hard at work on a project with what the PC(U.S.A.) General Assembly refers to as ‘people of color churches’ to determine whether majority non-White congregations with no   full-time leadership lack equitable access to resources to obtain the leadership their ministries require. Through our General Assembly’s mandate, majority people of color congregations that lack full-time pastoral leadership will be able to receive grants sufficient to acquire appropriate leadership in collaboration with our denomination’s Board of Pensions and others agencies. And that's huge!

Article above written by Beth Waltemath of the Presbyterian News Service.

Internationally, our major priority is called Liberia Project 180 which looks forward to the 180th anniversary in 2027 of Liberia’s Independence from the Presbyterian co-founded American Colonization Society. The Center for Repair hopes that Liberia’s celebration will co-create an opportunity for Presbyterians to learn from a panel of experts in Liberia what Presbyterians can do now to make a 180 degree turn from the colonial manner in which our relationship started with Indigenous Liberians to a transformed and transformational re-encounter with Indigenous Liberians and the rest of the people of Liberia so that the next 200 years will be a 180 degree improvement from the last 200 years.

Pat:  Can you remind our readers about the role of the Presbyterian Church in the history of Liberia?

Jermaine:   Absolutely.  It’s important to begin with the Haitian Revolution (1791 - 1804) which sent shockwaves throughout the Western hemisphere and beyond because it gave the world proof that White supremacist colonization and slavery could be and was being defeated.  But, to ensure that the African spirit of liberty that nourished the Haitian revolution would not infect the institution of slavery to the detriment of the United States’ economy and society, Presbyterians co-founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) with other Protestant Christians in the United States. The purpose of the ACS was to remove so-called free negroes from the United States so that they would not have the effect on enslaved Africans that free negroes had on enslaved Haitians. In this way, thousands of Africans from the United States migrated by choice from the United States into the land that remains home to Indigenous Liberians. Along with the newly arriving African-descended settlers from the United States came the forms of Christianity that were shaped by the need of White racists to justify, extend, and protect the practice of racial slavery. These settlers who have become known as Americo-Liberians frequently and paradigmatically deployed racist and colonial practices and concepts as a form of settler Christianity against Indigenous Liberians. Our current work seeks to understand what aspects of that legacy have to do with Presbyterians’ historical activities and what Indigenous Liberians require of the PC (U.S.A.) to begin a 180 degree turn that clears a path for an historic re-encounter.

NEXT: Part 3, the conclusion -- The Prospect for Reparations in the Trump Era