South Congregational Church
Racial Justice – Only a Beginning
This July, we invite members and friends of South Church to read My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Manakem. The book offers us a substantially different view of racism, and invites us to think of it not as a cognitive process so much as it is a lived experience in our very bodies – a soul wound. For those who wish to discuss the book together, Rev. Jed will facilitate a conversation at church right after worship on Sunday, August 27th. Please RSVP to Jed, so that enough refreshments can be bought.
Keith Ellison, a member of Congress, writes this: “Dr. W. E. B. Dubois put his finger on African American consciousness when he wrote one ever feels his twoness: an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body. But even DuBois never addressed the process of healing the psychological wounds of the twoness. In My Grandmother's Hands, Resmaa offers a path of internal reconciliation for the person enduring the generational trauma of American racism and gives us all a chance to dream of healing from it.”
-Rev. Jared A. Rardin
On May 21, 2023, South Congregational Church voted to become a Racial Justice Church.
We as members of South Congregational Church, declare we are a Racial Justice Church. We covenant to engage in an ongoing process of being:
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Learners: in a community of mutual accountability, about slavery, white privilege, implicit bias and all aspects of racism in our midst;
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Interrupters: of the continuing cycle of racism and
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Allies: with People of Color in challenging race-based injustice in all its manifestations.