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[Back to index of April 2007 articles] New panel will study black congregations By Lucy Chumbley At its March 13 meeting the Diocesan Council created task forces to study Black Congregations and the Impact of Slavery, approved start up funds for a Black History project and granted its Task Force on Racial Reconciliation committee status. The proposal to form a group to study ways to “strengthen and encourage the mission of the diocese’s black congregations” was put forward by the Rev. Carleton Hayden and was approved unanimously by the council. The task force on the Impact of Slavery was created in response to a resolution passed at January’s Diocesan Convention that called for the diocese to examine how it can be a “repairer of the breach” and achieve spiritual healing and reconciliation. (See article page 15.) The resolution also affirms legislation passed at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention that directs individual dioceses to collect and compile information about their complicity in the institution of slavery and the economic benefits they derived from it. Council members discussed how this topic might fit in with the work of the diocese’s existing Black History task force, but decided not to combine the two projects. Hayden, who is the designated author of the Black History project, pointed out that while the two topics are related, they are quite different. “It ought to be a history of what black people have done,” he said of the proposed book, which will be written in narrative form as a study guide for congregations. “[Researching the impact of slavery] would be teasing out one aspect of that history. … The impact of the development of slavery is more of a legal brief.” Paul Cooney told council members that the Black History project had not received funding in the diocese’s 2007 operating budget. “The committee believes for practical and principled reasons that the council should do everything possible to authorize an initial grant to move the project forward and demonstrate that this is something that we care a lot about,” he said. The council voted unanimously to authorize Cooney to designate up to $15,000 in seed money from the operating budget to begin the project and to symbolize its commitment. The Rev. Janice Robinson, rector of Grace, Silver Spring, and two other members of the task force on Racial Reconciliation asked that the council consider their request to become a committee to acknowledge the ongoing nature of their work. “We want to be more permanent than a task force, but will continue regardless,” Robinson said, describing the group’s “Racial Sobriety” training sessions. “’Task force’ has a temporary standing. We don’t think the work we’re doing is temporary. We want to make it clear to the diocese that there’s a group that is doing this work.” In his address to the 2007 Diocesan Convention, Bishop John B. Chane called for these workshops to be made mandatory for clergy, staff and lay leaders around the diocese. Robinson reported that seven members of her group had now been certified as facilitators for the workshops and that five additional training sessions had been scheduled. “It’s intense work but what we’re hoping people can take from that is the concept of the healing circle,” she said. “I get very depressed on the issue of race in the U.S., and the church has been so deeply implicated,” Hayden said. “I think with the racial reconciliation training, the black history project, the task forces on slavery and black congregations, that somehow we can get some synergy between these things and really move it forward as a diocese. And the synergy is coming, but it’s a hard time coming.” In other matters the council:
[Back to index of April 2007 articles]
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