A Long-term Commitment to Racial Justice, Healing and Reconciliation

– Prayer for the Human Family (Book of Common Prayer, p. 815)

The Episcopal Church has an overarching vision called Becoming Beloved Community – the Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society. Clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Church are encouraged to participate in racial reconciliation formation to live into this calling as Beloved Community.

The Wyoming Episcopal Church Deputation for the 82nd General Convention of the Episcopal Church, scheduled for June 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky, has recently completed “Sacred Ground,” a film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. The curriculum walks through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity.

The 11-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.

This series is open to all. Participants are invited to peel away the layers that have contributed to the challenges and divides of the present day – all while grounded in our call to faith, hope and love. For more information on Sacred Ground, go to https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/

The vision of Beloved Community rises from a commitment to following the Bible’s most important commandments: to love God and love our neighbors, in whom we see the face of God. Beloved Community is the community that loves as God intends: where truth is told and hierarchies of human value are dismantled, where each person and culture is protected and honored as an equally beloved part of the human family of God, and where we counter human selfishness – the true root of sin and racism – with the selfless love of Jesus.

The Becoming Beloved Community vision – presented by the Episcopal Church’s leaders in May 2017 and continually revisited since – is a practical and theological framework guiding Episcopalians into racial healing, justice and reconciliation. It is a positive and biblically based ideal – a dream toward which we strive, and not just something we are against. It is the end toward which the Jesus Movement points.

The path toward justice, healing and Beloved Community covers four interrelated areas of engagement and commitment. We lay them out like quadrants of a labyrinth:

Telling the Truth about our Churches & Race

Baptismal Promise: Persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.

Proclaiming the Dream of Beloved Community

Baptismal Promise: Proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.

Practicing Jesus’s Way of Healing Love

Baptismal Promise: Seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Repairing the Breach in Society and Institutions

Baptismal Promise: Strive for justice and peace among all people & respect the dignity of every human being.

Becoming Beloved Community will take more than our lifetimes. But we have heard the cry of the prophet Micah, “O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). With prayer, by the grace of God alone, rooted in our baptismal promises, we set out on a lifelong commitment to follow the loving, liberating, and life-giving way of Jesus.

Text source for this article from: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/racial-reconciliation/

From the Rev. Canon Bobbe Fitzhugh,

Episcopal Church in Wyoming, St. James’ Episcopal Church Encampment