Resources for Racial Healing and Justice
As the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, we dream and work to foster Beloved Communities where all people may experience dignity and abundant life and see themselves and others as beloved children of God. The resources are offered to help us to understand and take up the long-term commitments necessary to form loving, liberating and life-giving relationships with each other.
Books
Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times
by Michael B. Curry with Sara Grace
A thought provoking book that is challenging in all the right ways. Bishop Michael Curry takes the grand idea that Love is the Way from his sermon for a royal wedding and unpacks the message in a powerful with with stories from his life and anecdotes from others.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
Stevenson asserts, “The opposite of poverty is justice” and then makes his case in a memoir of his defense of poor people wrongly imprisoned or given vastly disproportionate sentences as they had no means to secure good legal representation. He founded the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative to fund expert legal representation for innocent persons wrongly convicted.
Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God
by Kelly Brown Douglas
Noted theologian Kelly Brown Douglas offers this book as her “refusal to be consoled until the justice that is God’s is made real in the world.” This is an important work on the need for transformation which points to how that work must begin.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
by Edward E. Baptist
This cleared eyes look at the “peculiar institution” of slavery harnesses economic data to the stories of enslaved people to craft a strong case for over turning how history commonly tells the story of the Old South.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander
The devastating effects of the “War on Drugs” at pulling stunningly high percentages of America’s black population into the prison system is just the beginning for this much recommended look at mass incarceration.
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin
An honest and ultimately hopeful story from a man wrongly accused of murder who served 30 years on Alabama’s death row as an innocent man.
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
These letters from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his 15-year old son are an important work. As he tells his son, “Race is the child of racism, not the father.” For even the idea of “race” as an indubitable feature of the natural world is nothing but a social construct that benefits some at the cost of others.
Events and Training
Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing
The Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing, founded by Dr. Catherine Meeks, provides programs and resources to promote racial reconciliation.
In addition to events and trainings, The Center offers a Youth Dismantling Racism Curriculum and facilitator training for those who want to lead youth in this curriculum.
Sacred Ground
“Sacred Ground” is a Film-Based Dialogue Series on Race & Faith created by Episcopal Church staff led by film director Katrina Brown. This set of videos and workbooks can be used to facilitate conversations on racism and reconciliation.