wfn.org | Sabbath of Support for Burned Churches

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: Wendy S. McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227
Internet: carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

NCC6/19/97             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SABBATH OF SUPPORT FOR BURNED HOUSES OF WORSHIP SET FOR JUNE 
27-29; S.C., OTHER ECUMENICAL EFFORTS MOVE TO LONG-TERM 
ANTI-RACISM WORK

 COLUMBIA, S.C., June 19 ---- What started a year ago as 
a weekend of worship and prayer for those suffering from 
attacks on their houses of worship has evolved into an 
extensive anti-racism initiative.

One year ago, the South Carolina Christian Action 
Council, located in the state with the highest number of 
church burnings, initiated a "Sabbath of Support" weekend 
for attacked houses of worship.  The idea was picked up and 
adapted by ecumenical and interfaith councils across the 
United States.  Congregations hung pieces of charred lumber 
by their door, held vigils, recruited volunteers to rebuild 
burned churches and took up special offerings.

This year, churches across the country again will pray 
for an end to hate and will show their solidarity with 
burned and vandalized churches, synagogues, mosques and 
temples in many creative ways.

Equally as important as these observances is the 
ongoing creative work faith communities are doing to fight 
racism and hate where they live.  The planning of last 
year's "Sabbath of Support" was the genesis of a "Sabbath of 
Support Project" (SOS Project) in South Carolina that moves 
beyond reactive prayer to active prevention in both practice 
and attitude.  As such, the South Carolina experience 
illustrates what already has happened in many local, 
regional and state ecumenical groups around the country 
where congregants are learning to speak against racism and 
hate, not only in a one-time prayer service but in all areas 
of their lives year-round.

According to the Rev. John Boonstra, Executive Minister 
of the Washington Association of Churches, Seattle, and 
President of the National Council of Churches Ecumenical 
Networks Working Group, "a lot of local councils have done 
immediate work assisting churches in rebuilding while state 
bodies are doing long-term systemic work against racism and 
building significant partnerships."  But, he said, "at its 
heart, all of this kind of work is local."

 Following are just a few of the anti-racism initiatives 
going on at local and state levels, including the South 
Carolina story.  Please contact your local ecumenical and 
interfaith councils for planned Sabbath of Support 
observances, rebuilding experiences and their ongoing work 
against hate and racism in your area.

Beyond Bricks and Mortar: S.C. Christian Action Council 
Starts Anti-Racism Project

 "Last year, the Sabbath of Support was planned in 
response to the rash of church burnings (against Black and 
multiracial churches) and a way for the worshipping 
community to respond in solidarity," said Julia Sibley, 
Director of the Sabbath of Support for the South Carolina 
Christian Action Council.   "Out of that experience came 
this project to address race relations from a more systemic 
point of view so that we are not only working on bricks and 
mortar but on root causes."

Through gifts from the Roman Catholic Diocese of 
Pittsburgh and other ecumenical and civic groups in 
Southwest Pennsylvania and from the Presiding Bishop's Fund 
of the Episcopal Church, Ms. Sibley was hired as a part-time 
and then a full-time staff person and multifaceted plans 
began to form.

In recent years, South Carolina has had the highest 
number of Black and multiracial church burnings of any state 
- 34 since October 1991 - according to the Center for 
Democratic Renewal, a group based in Atlanta that tracks 
hate crimes.

To deal with practical arson prevention, one of the 
first projects of the SOS Project addressed the insurance 
and protection of churches through workshops in the six 
jurisdictional conferences of the African Methodist 
Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

However, with the Governor's announcement in November 
1996 to support transferring the Confederate battle flag 
from atop the Statehouse dome, that issue became a focus of 
the project.  The SOS Project organized a Witness for 
Reconciliation which brought 500 religious leaders from 
across the state to gather in a silent circle of love and 
support around the current site of the Legislature.  The 
group also issued a statement signed by 700 religious 
leaders and run as a full-page advertisement in three major 
South Carolina newspapers calling for the Legislature to 
take seriously the call to transfer the flag.

The SOS Project also has hosted the first gathering of 
a statewide network of human relations organizations and 
will compile a resource directory from that meeting.  The 
latest SOS Project endeavor involves the establishment of 
Bi-racial Task Forces in each of the South Carolina public 
high schools.  With other partners, the SOS Project 
sponsored a "Unity Rally" in March for interested students 
that drew a good response. To follow-up, there will be a 
four-day training institute at the College of Charleston 
this summer "so that students can work on a peer level in 
conflict resolution and anti-racism," Ms. Sibley said.  "We 
hope to keep replicating this throughout all the high 
schools in South Carolina and think it will make a big 
difference."

A Tale of Two Cities: Springfield, Mass., Church Council 
Responds to Church Burnings

One of the new relationships Ms. Sibley highlights when 
she talks about South Carolina is with a local church 
council "up north" in Massachusetts.  When the Church 
Council of Greater Springfield received the National Council 
of Churches/Church World Service appeal about the church 
burnings, it responded with fund-raising, advocacy through 
the local congressional representative and with a press 
conference.  But it did not stop there.

According to the Rev. Ann Geer, Executive Director of 
the Church Council of Greater Springfield, "We wanted to 
become more personally involved with a church."  Rev. Geer 
gathered African American pastors from member churches and 
found a local connection to Rosemary Baptist Church in 
Barnwell, S.C.

The Rev. Morris Stimage-Norwood, an African American 
Presbyterian pastor who had only recently moved from 
Columbia, S.C., to Springfield, Mass., traveled to Rosemary 
Baptist Church with Rev. Geer and her husband in July 1996.  
Immediately, said Rev. Geer, "We knew this was where God 
wanted us to be."  The Springfield ecumenical council made a 
commitment to rebuild the church, and did so by forming 
coalitions in Springfield and with South Carolina partners.  
They went beyond churches to include interfaith and 
community groups such as local colleges, the United Way and 
Urban League.

In January of this year, Revs. Stimage-Norwood and Geer 
went back and helped to get together a concomitant coalition 
in the Barnwell area which included businesses, colleges, 
community organizations, and other faith groups, including 
the majority denomination in the state, the Southern Baptist 
Convention.

Drawing on its four-year-long experience with study 
circles to address racism and with pairing congregations 
across racial and religious lines, the Church Council of 
Greater Springfield has been sending a rebuilding team every 
week to Barnwell.  Each team of 12 people is racially and 
religiously integrated.  They not only fly together, work 
together and eat together, but also meet together on Sunday, 
Tuesday and Thursday evenings for frank discussions about 
racism.

Upon completion of the rebuilt Rosemary Baptist Church, 
due in August, Rev. Geer and her husband will work on 
training people in Barnwell in the study circle technique 
and introduce a new guide, "When a Church is Burned in Our 
Town - Guide for Community Dialogue and Problem Solving."  
Meanwhile, back home, the Church Council of Greater 
Springfield will be embarking on city-wide study circles 
that involve not only churches and the interfaith community, 
but schools, elected officials, colleges and neighborhood 
groups.

"This is a `tale of two cities' in a sense," Rev. Geer 
said.  "As both communities have bonded together, we have 
realized that we are dealing with the same issues (in the 
South and the North)."  And in both cities, Rev. Geer 
reports, "Folks who have lived in the same town are now 
establishing dialogues that are leading into friendships."

Minnesota Anti-Racism Initiative Stresses Confession, 
Accountability

The idea of replicating and expanding an educational 
anti-racism program has also been important to the work of 
the Minnesota Council of Churches, Minneapolis, which has 
had an ongoing initiative.

In May of this year, the Minnesota Churches Anti-Racism 
Initiative (MCARI) marked its fourth anniversary.  In 1993, 
the Minnesota Council of Churches (MCC) endorsed MCARI as a 
statewide initiative.  With the assistance of Crossroads 
Ministry in Chicago, MCC staff and volunteers began to work 
with member denominations and congregations throughout the 
state.  In 1994, three church councils - the state, 
Minneapolis and St. Paul groups - merged their anti-racism 
efforts into MCARI with staffing through the Tri-Council 
Coordinating Commission.

Four years of anti-racism education, training and 
organizing in Minnesota have resulted in 3,000 people 
receiving some kind of anti-racism training, according to 
the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, Executive Director of the Minnesota 
Council of Churches.  These programs include one to three-
hour introductions to MCARI's work as well as longer, more 
intensive one-day and three-day programs.

"We wanted to be clear (in all the programs) that this 
is not multicultural training but anti-racism work, which 
includes a power and privilege analysis," Rev. Chemberlin 
said.  "This has meant that we have done our own 
institutional analysis about the ways our agencies have 
embodied racism, albeit unintentionally."  All of the board 
and leadership of the Minnesota Council of Churches, the 
Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches and the Tri-Council 
Coordinating Commission went through the longer training, 
she said.

Rev. Chemberlin said the one thing she often does not 
hear in discussions about race, including in church and 
ecumenical circles, is a "call for confession on the part of 
the dominant culture."  She said the MCARI program operates 
on the assumption that in order for there to be any kind of 
reconciliation, there first has to be analysis and 
accountability.  "When we stay only in a direct service 
role, we miss accountability which is so central to anti-
racism work," she said.

Rev. Chemberlin related the need for accountability to 
the ecumenical spirit.  "In a fragmented, consumer culture, 
the ecumenical community says we are still related," she 
said.  "Building communities in which we are accountable to 
each other takes a long, long time."  She said the changes 
with this kind of work are slower and more subtle.  "White 
people who are part of the project begin to see the world 
differently.  They begin to see racism where they hadn't 
seen it before."

One program that merged into MCARI was the Ecumenical 
Partners Program of the Greater Minneapolis Council of 
Churches.  This program has helped overcome racial isolation 
in the community by joining together predominantly African 
American and predominantly European American congregations 
in partnership, building the kind of long-term relationships 
Rev. Chemberlin believes are important.

Rev. Chemberlin said that following anti-racism 
training, white people learn to "live our lives as 
recovering racists.  Unless we are vigilant personally and 
institutionally, racism is going to happen."

The MCARI initiative includes an apprentice program for 
trainers and is also in the process of developing a web page 
which will provide a warehouse of anti-racism education.

The attempt in Minnesota "to build Martin Luther King's 
beloved community," according to Rev. Chemberlin, is playing 
out on a very local level in St. Paul.  There, two Baptist 
churches, one white and one Black, are struggling to unite.  
Both of the pastors have been involved with MCARI and want 
the unity of their churches to be authentic and honest.

Racial Justice Means Economic Justice for the North Carolina 
Council of Churches

For the North Carolina Council of Churches, to be 
honest and authentic has meant to concentrate on economic 
justice issues.  The Rev. Collins Kilburn, Executive 
Director of the North Carolina Council of Churches, is quick 
to point out that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s emphasis at the 
end of his life was the Poor People's Campaign, which called 
for governmental action to help the poor.

"Our focus prior to, during and after the burning of 
Black churches is going to be on the economic or systemic 
aspect of racism as distinct from the attitudinal 
dimension," the Rev. Kilburn said.  "We try to define racism 
in a way that is broad and includes the fact that half of 
minority children live in poverty and the economic gaps 
between Blacks and whites haven't changed in 20 years."

On September 16, 1996, the North Carolina Council of 
Churches held a "Day of Conscience" on the anniversary of 
the Birmingham church bombing which included preaching, 
workshops and a march in downtown Raleigh, the North 
Carolina state capital.  "It was a good event that got some 
attention and brought Black and white church leaders 
together," Rev. Kilburn reported.

On a long-term basis, the North Carolina Council of 
Churches will focus on systemic racism through publications 
and conferences.  Every year around the Martin Luther King, 
Jr., Holiday Observance, the Racial Justice Committee of the 
North Carolina Council of Churches sends out a publication 
detailing the economic disparities between Blacks and whites 
and calling for "quality education, job training, job 
creation, decent housing and basic health care for all."

The letter says that "the nation, dominated by white 
Americans, had not been willing to get on with the second 
phase of the (Civil Rights) movement."

"I am skeptical about approaches which elevate how nice 
it would be to all hold hands together and that do not call 
for collective, governmental action to solve our problems," 
Rev. Kilburn said.

In these efforts in response to burned churches and to 
work against racism, local and state ecumenical councils are 
"bringing a spiritual voice to community development," in 
the words of the Rev. Boonstra.

Rev. Boonstra said he hopes that efforts like the NCC's 
Burned Churches Project, Phase II, will bring together 
ecumenical groups not only to share what they are doing 
locally for racial and economic justice but "to contribute 
to the effort to come up with a national strategy" around 
these issues.  "The challenge is with us as local and 
regional bodies to pressure our local and state governments" 
for just policies, he said, but also "to use our local 
experiences to contribute to the national discussion."

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