wfn.org | Racial monitoring agency acts on personnel, other needs

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Sept. 25, 2000  News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202)
546-8722·Washington    10-30-71B {431}

LINTHICUM HEIGHTS, Md. (UMNS) -  Personnel  matters received high priority
as new governing members of the United  Methodist Commission on Religion and
Race met here for the first time in the 2000-2004 quadrennium.

During their Sept. 21-24 organizational meeting, members bid  farewell to
Constance Nelson Barnes, associate general secretary for the African
American portfolio and unanimously re-elected the Rev. Ken Deere, associate
general secretary for the Native American constituency.   Barnes had
resigned earlier and plans to attend seminary next year. 

Deere, who also staffs the commission's Minority Group Self-Determination
Fund, was the only member of the agency's staff affected by a churchwide
rule limiting service in the same elected position to the 12 years prior to
Jan.1, 2001. He was re-elected for missional reasons, according to
commission officers. Exceptions to the 12-year rule are permitted by a
two-thirds vote of the electing body.

New officers elected by the commission are president, Bishop Elias G.
Galvan, Seattle; vice president, Bishop Charlene Kammerer, Charlotte, N.C.;
secretary, Vicki Woods, Bangor, Maine; and assistant secretary, Minnie Romo,
San Antonio.

In other business, the 43-member commission:

·	directed the commission staff to write President Clinton with copies
to the chairmen of the appropriate Congressional oversite committees voicing
concern about the role of racism in the handling of the case against Wen Ho
Lee, who had been a scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory;
·	added 13 at-large members to the commission's roster;
·	re-nominated the Rev. Chester Jones as chief executive of the
commission and renewed the other elected staff.

Retired Bishop Joseph H. Yeakel, Smithsburg, Md., presided at the opening
session. In reviewing the creation of the commission in the 1968 merger of
the Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist churches, he reminded the
commission members that racism found in attitudes and behaviors can be
overcome by conversion, but systemic racism that is imbedded in the
institutions of society, even the church, "is always at work."

Jones, the top executive of the agency, urged the commission members not to
sell their birthrights as children of God but to persist in working for
racial justice both within the church and the world.

The next meeting of the commission will be held Feb. 25-27 in the Washington
metropolitan area.

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United Methodist News Service
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