Committee on Racial Reconciliation

Members
The Rev. Jacques Hadler, Jr., Chair
The Rev. Sherrill Page
The Rev. Janice Robinson
The Rev. Marguerite Steadman
Michael Dressler
Robert Graham
David Maglott
Janet Sargent
Myrtle Washington

Church House staff contact
Paul E. Cooney

The report below represents the Annual Report for 2004, presented to Council at the January 2005 Diocesan Convention and printed in the 2005 Journal and Directory.

Diocese of Washington
REPORT OF THE TASK FORCE ON RACIAL RECONCILIATION

The Task Force met monthly over the course of 2004 and focused its energy in two areas. The first has involved producing a six hour basic workshop to be offered regularly around the Diocese with the purpose of getting people oriented to racial reconciliation. It was offered twice for Diocesan leaders from the Standing Committee, Diocesan Council, and Church House staff, on May 8 and November 6. According to feedback from participants and our own assessment, it has improved with each offering. Increasingly the theological approach is being well integrated with Fr. Clarence Williams' Racial Sobriety approach. The Task Force is thankful for its collaboration with Fr. Williams, a Roman Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of Detroit, who has written an excellent book, Racial Sobriety , published by the Institute for Recovery from Racisms, 2002. He also offers training in doing workshops with his material. Two of Task Force members, David Maglott and Myrtle Washington, participated in his June training and took leadership in the November 6 th workshop.

The second focus has involved designing follow-up initiatives for those who have taken the basic Racial Reconciliation workshop. Clearly, one workshop is not going to shift the deep systemic, four hundred year old North American history of racializing folk. The basic intent of the workshop to first re-orient people from racial divisions/barriers to racial sobriety and reconciliation, and then offer some ways to maintain that sobriety and orientation to reconciliation. This is analogous to Alcoholics Anonymous, where regular meetings provide the recovering alcoholic with on-going awareness about the alcoholic thinking which comes so easily. What form do those meetings take for those desiring to recover from the pervasive radicalized thinking in society?

This year the goal is to continue offering the basic workshop and expand those invited to include all Diocesan leaders. This includes delegates to Convention, members of all committees, all clergy and wardens. The current dates are April 9 and May 14, Saturdays from 9:00 to 3:30 . Please make a note of them. A two-day version will be offered at Virginia Theological Seminary for graduating seminarians in late January. Following these offerings the Task Force hopes to find candidates for special training with Fr. Williams. The vision is to have a cadre of trained folk who can offer material from the workshop and follow-up help to committees, parishes and regional groupings.

Finally, the Task Force said goodbye to the Rev. Dr. David Pollock who, after many years of anti-racism work, resigned to focus his extra-curricular attention on his family, and to the co-chair, the Rev. Allison St. Louis, who has now gone to Hartford , Connecticut , as a canon of the cathedral. There is, however, the possibility of collaborating with Allison, the cathedral, and perhaps her new diocese in this approach to anti-racism training.

The Task Force is thankful for the support of Bishops Chane and Harris, and for God's grace in expanding this essential ministry among diocesan leaders and in the members' own hearts.

The Rev. Jacques Hadler, Jr., Chair