Ending the sin of racism – A historic opportunity awaits the district

From the Moderator – Fletcher Farrar

There is a kairos moment awaiting the District of Illinois and Wisconsin. A kairos moment is an opportune time, a historic opportunity, when an inescapable dilemma is turned into a new and exciting challenge. A kairos moment is when awareness that superficial change is no change at all is followed by the discovery that deeper transformation is a gift of rebirth that is ours for the asking.

The opportunity that awaits the district lies in living fully into our new vision statement’s call for “bridging cultural divisions.” Our congregations can be transformed and liberated by our becoming an anti-racist church.

What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said many years ago is still true. “We must face the sad fact that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, when we stand to sing ‘In Christ there is no East or West,’ we stand in the most segregated hour of America.” This isn’t where we want to stand. Many of us are frustrated by our church’s inability to break out of the white-walled prison we find ourselves in. Yet when we open the doors to “welcome” all races, we are disappointed that few people of color walk through them. We learn that dismantling racism and bridging cultural divisions isn’t easy. It goes well beyond ridding ourselves of the sin of personal prejudice and bigotry. On the subject of racism, we have a lot to learn.

Yet the district’s congregations that have stepped out in faith to form relationships with people of color have found their experiences spiritually satisfying. The Champaign church is making new friends through sharing its building with an African-American congregation. Mt. Morris has hired a community outreach coordinator who is introducing church members to people of other cultures. Highland Avenue has had choir and pulpit exchanges with an African- American congregation. Chicago First has worked on issues of race and multiculturalism for many years.

There is much we can do, together, to end the sin of racism and to restore relationships in our churches, in our communities and in our world. The first step is to become more aware, through learning and by taking training. And Christ will help us as we learn and grow. 1 Cor. 12: 12, 13 “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”