I attended the first of 4 Dismantling Racism events that will be offered throughout our conference as part of ourBelieve Again! plan for ministry. Here are a few of my thoughts.
First, I think we NEED this. Racism is definitely something that needs to be dismantled in our denomination, in our churches, and in our communities. I'm glad to see we're doing SOMETHING. Second, I'm not sure how effective this training was in accomplishing the task. It ran longer than I thought was necessary, and the presenters, though good and knowledgable, lost most of us in the afternoon session, IMO. One of the revealing things to me was, often throughout the presentations, the leaders would ask for a show of hands regarding different things: how many of you have been to the home of someone of another race in the past 6 months, how many of you have worshipped in a church where you were the minority, etc. The presenters were consistently impressed and surprised with how many of us had done these things. Surprised enough to comment on it repeatedly. Now, perhaps they were just being overly affirmative, but I think they were genuinely impressed. The bad part about that is, I think it shows that we as clergy ARE doing some things to dismantle racism and raise our level of awareness and sensitivity, but it's still not working. I think this first seminar was too basic - it showed that we're already trying to do the basics but they're not making much of a difference. We need more depth, and we need more laity to be involved. I think the bigger problem with racism in our churches is not the pastors, but the laity who struggle to accept racial diversity in the pulpit. And let's face it, if certain laity are harboring racist feelings and attitudes, they're most likely NOT going to attend a racial diversity seminar with us. So, how do we address this? That's one of the major questions that, sadly, this first seminar did not answer for me. Hopefully the next ones will offer a little more, because I definitely agree that we need a lot of work in this area.
8 comments:
Check out a book called "Prejudice in Harry Potter" by Karen Brown. A great read whether you like Harry Potter or not. Whether you've read the books or not, you'll get this. First academic study on Harry Potter that looks at the race and discrimination issues. Can you belive that?
I loved the HP books, so I'll have to check this one out. Thanks for the recommendation!
A start is a start. I think you are right about not going more in depth and not giving us credit for the basics. I am sure that there will be a round 2 and it will go a bit deeper (at least that is my hope). Again, good observations.
Hey Jeff,
Good post. I am glad we will have more training. This first session truly made me think of the amount of prejudice our Western Pa culture has towards everyone that we consider "not normal." I am just perplexed by some comments that have such a negative tone. We've got some work to do and as pastors, must model such as you described. Blessings.
Any negative tone to my comments is not about the idea behind these things. As I said to begin with, I think we NEED this. I want to see something positive come out of it, in fact, radically positive. It's just an overwhelming and far reaching goal, considering the levels of racism and prejudice that exist, and I'm anxious to see real progress made. I have high hopes for the next training sessions, and hope that they are more in depth and more practical. I guess I left this last one with the thought, "Ok, now what?" Hopefully the next sessions will answer that question. I plan to go to all of these, whether we are required to or not. I hope many others will attend as well, and continue to support our goal of dismantling racism.
negative ned.
Bespoke Belligerent Brett!
I know you are, but what am I? I don't make garbage, I burn it (OK, well, garbage and 45 surrounding acres of lush forest and field).
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