OUR JOURNEY

Neighborhood Church, since its early days, has been committed to the work of restoration through relationship with God and community. We have declared ourselves to be a reconciling and justice-seeking congregation, working to be anti-racist and pro-LGBTQIA+ human beings. We want to embody liberationist Christianity rooted in the radical love of Christ for all people.

But if you look around on a typical Sunday (as if we had those!) you might notice that most of the faces have light skin - not all, but most. And while in our hearts we long to be a part of a congregation that is as diverse as the world of humanity in its fullness - that was not how we got our start. We determined that to begin our work striving to be anti-racist, that we were going to attempt to be the best darn white folks we could be and to elevate the work of other more equipped, experienced, and engaged community partner organizations as we began our work. Early on we hosted meetings of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), raised funds and supplies for Southerners on a New Ground (SONG) and a little later began offering free space for Southern Fried Queer Pride (SFQP). We have hosted workshops and film screenings, conversations and worship experiences centered around the voices of black and brown people, particularly black and brown queer and trans voices, and have received and distributed offerings for reparations for slavery.

But there is more to do. There is more for each of us, of every kind of person, to learn and grow and act upon to remove racism from our minds and language and hearts - and to tear down structures that preserve racist policies and programs. We have work to do in our own congregation, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our housing choices, in our workplaces, in our investments, in our denominational connections - there is much to do.

THE HISTORY

God creates every human being in God’s image, meaning that every human life is gifted with so many different varieties of creativity, connection, and the capacity to love - not on accident, but by divine design. God’s love is for all of us, even beyond our willingness to love ourselves or each other.

Beginning in the 15th century, European nations began to colonize and enslave African and later indigenous American peoples and transport them to the Americas, bit by bit building an interwoven system of wealth extraction, financial exploitation, and dehumanizing labor practices called the international slave trade. In order for this system to “work” the Europeans created a worldview that saw people of lighter skin as “truly human” and other people as “less than human” or in many cases not even human at all. Black and brown peoples were enslaved, forced to labor to build wealth for their enslavers, ripped away from ancestral cultures and homeplaces, and treated without dignity, honor, or the humanity they were endowed with by their Creator.

In creating and then fortifying this system of structural oppression, people of European descent also dehumanized themselves, creating a “color” system with the state of “whiteness” above all other peoples. Some people groups were allowed to enter into the state of “whiteness” while others were not. In the United States, whiteness dominates almost all spaces - economic, educational, social, political, and religious. In Europe and The Americas, the religious space bears particular culpability in this dehumanizing process - precisely because it involved people who called themselves white twisting the words of sacred texts, teachers, prophets - and God - to reinforce the dehumanizing work of elevating one group of God’s beloved creations over all the other groups, and by attempting to bless the work of enslavement, brutality, exploitation, rape, kidnapping, and murder with a veneer of holy words and practices.

Even after enslavement ended, white people continued to consolidate power through decades of indentured sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, obscure requirements for voting - and through violence, lynchings, intimidation, unjust policing and imprisonment of black and brown people. Even today systems of the disproportionate mass incarceration of black and brown people, many of whom are citizens (and others who are immigrants to this country), police brutality, and public policies of housing, education, finance, and employment - now more rapidly becoming privatized for corporate profit - keep the racist structures of inequality and injustice alive and well in the United States even in 2020.

But despite the ongoing centuries long efforts to declare whiteness the norm and to dehumanize black and brown people, the spirit of courage, the bright flame of human life, the brilliant spark of the creative mind, the enduring strength of heart of black and brown and indigenous people persists and at times thrives. The divine spark that endows all people with full humanity is alive and well. And for those among us who are labelled white - we are called to understand our own full humanity as well, because white people have also been dehumanized by the system that elevates whiteness. Even this historical statement is centered in the “white story” and not in the lived experiences of black and brown people. There is more to the story.

No one is free until all of us are free. And so we are all being invited to claim our humanity - our belovedness, our worth, our power, our strength, our creativity - to at long last recognize all of the incredible varieties of person as each and all fully human. Black lives matter.

THE WORK OF ANTI-RACISM

Anti-racism is fighting against racism. It’s that simple...and incredibly complex because we live in a society that has been woven together on a foundation of racism and white supremacy. If we were raised in this society, we often have a great deal of un-learning and deconstructing of ideas to do before we can fully engage in anti-racist work.

Please take time to check out this very helpful introduction from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Click here.

OUR ONGOING WORK TOGETHER

We invite you to join us in the work of education around what it means to be a person committed to the work of anti-racism and how to take steps along the way. Check out these resources below for places to start. We’ll be releasing some more actions steps as they’re appropriate and available, so please consider signing up for our eNews to stay in the loop and engaged during this important time.

📚What to read?

How to Be an Antiracist: Ibram X. Kendi
I’m Still Here: Austin Channing Brown
So You Want to Talk About Race: Ijeoma Oluo
Me and White Supremacy: Layla F. Saad

Please buy these books at a local bookstore rather than on sites like Amazon - consider supporting Brave + Kind Books, a Black-owned bookstore in Decatur.

👀 Who to follow?

Andre Henry: @theandrehenry
Rachel Cargle: @rachel.cargle
Ibram X. Kendi: @ibramxk
From Privilege to Progress: @privtoprog
Naomi Wadler: @naomiwadler
Layla F. Saad: @laylafsaad
I Weigh (Jameela Jamil): @i_weigh

Consider contributing to these influencers’ Patreon or Venmos - we are consuming and learning from their work and they should be compensated fairly for that work of education! You can find their information in their bio on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

📺 What to watch?

13th - Netflix
Just Mercy - YouTube (free on many streaming platforms during month of June)
When They See Us - Netflix
The Racial Wealth Gap, Explained, S1:E1 - Netfix
This list of TED and TEDx Talks that are free on YouTube. This list was compiled by @wastefreemarie
- “We Need to Talk About An Injustice” Bryan Stevenson
- “The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History” David Ikard
- “Let’s Get to the Root of Racial Injustice” Megan Ming Francis
- “How America’s Public Schools Keep Children in Poverty” Kandice Sumner
- “The Symbols of Systemic Racism - And How to Take Away Their Power” Paul Rucker

🎧 What to listen to?

Codeswitch podcast
Brene Brown’s interview with Ibram X Kendi on How To Be An Anti-Racist
1619 podcast
Justice In America podcast

‼️ How to act

Support Black-owned businesses
Stop supporting businesses and other organizations that don’t support Black lives. This may come at some inconvenience, discomfort, or cost to you, but it is an important way to align your behavior with your beliefs.
Incorporate Black voices and voices of indigenous and other people of color into your life through books, art, poetry, music, movies, shows, and podcasts on any topic you like!
Listen to Black people and other people who are different races or ethnicities than you. Don’t think that just because you’ve read a book or listened to a podcast that you are now an authority.
Be humble. It’s okay to still be learning. But, also...
Don’t ask Black people to teach you. Do your own work to learn.
Stick with it. Don’t give up when it gets uncomfortable or if you’re not getting the praise you thought you would. Anti-racism work isn’t about us. It’s about repairing harm that has been done and making a better world.
Support organizations that support Black lives. Make it a regular offering of support, not just a one time thing. You can support organizations with money, time, amplifying their voice, communications, and needs, and offering to share other resources.

Some Atlanta organizations (or national orgs that have Atlanta chapters) we recommend are:

Southern Fried Queer Pride (SFQP)
Southerners On New Ground (SONG)
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)
NAACP
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)

Here are other national organizations you might want to check out:

Color of Change
Movement For Black Lives (M4BL)
Campaign Zero

Other Resources:

Scaffolded Antiracism resources - where are you as a white person in the ongoing journey of committing to live as an anti-racist person? What should you be reading according to how you identify right now? Click here.
Talking About Race resources from the National Museum of African American History and Culture - This web resource includes many topics and ways to approach the topics, including resources for talking with children. Click here.
Racial Justice Resource list from Emory University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - A thorough list that includes anti-racism resources, organization lists, Black-owned business lists, and resources for Black people needing support and mental health resources. Click here.
Freedom School - You can dive deeper into learning with the Black feminist liberation education this program. Click here.
Implicit Bias Training - A self-paced online course offered by the United Methodist Church’s Commission on Religion and Race. Click here.
Free course from Yale on African American History - Click here.
Justice In June - Or any other month! A guided resource for engaging anti-racism a little bit each day. Click here.