The conversation and work of Racial Reconciliation.

​




​Reconciliation is the spiritual practice of seeking loving, liberating and life-giving relationship with God and one another, and striving to heal and transform injustice and brokenness in ourselves, our communities, institutions and society.


​​Recommended reading: Realizing Beloved Community
Report from the House of Bishops Theology Committee

Available from any Episcopal bookstore, Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Cokesbury, or your preferred bookseller.

List Price: $28.95 | Paperback | 9781640655935

We receive no benefit from your purchase of this book)


​SACRED GROUND: a film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, grounded in faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. The 11-part series is built around a powerful online curriculum of documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.
​Sacred Ground is part of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, our ministries, and our society.


​Grant us Grace, O Lord, to battle audaciously
against evil and to make no peace with oppression.
Make us your vessels of transformation,
to resist cruelty in all its manifestations:
that no human shall be denied the right to thrive,
to live without fear, or to flourish in all their promise.
God calls us to courageously act in the Way of Love
and to be agents toward changing racism
bring us together, Lord, to face our sinful ways,
that we may change our systemic inequity,
and embrace the changes we must make.
Let us rejoice in the work begun almost 160 years ago,
and grant us the resolve to continue
the healing and reconciliation,
and the will to ensure that no person
is ever subjected to bigotry and hatred.
We offer this prayer that your glory and honor
might be made known through the freedom of all people.

Prayer to honor Juneteenth, 2022

​


​CHURCHWIDE


​​The Mission of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing is to provide tools and experiences that allow faith communities – and the larger community of individuals – to engage in dismantling racism through education, prayer, dialogue, pilgrimage, and spiritual formation.

​
VIRTUAL LIBRARY | CFRH (centerforracialhealing.org)


DIOCESAN



​Justice and Racial Reconciliation Task Force
​Anti-Racism Covenant (download file)

The Justice and Racial Reconciliation Task Force was created to help the diocese live into its role as the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement in eastern Kansas, especially regarding issues of racial reconciliation, one of the three Jesus Movement areas of focus articulated by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.

The task force supports the bishop and the Diocese of Kansas as we learn and grow in our awareness of the dynamics of racism and white supremacy in the church and our nation. 

We see our work within the larger sweep of the Episcopal Church’s Becoming Beloved Community initiative and have structured our recent priorities in response to the Anti-racism Covenant developed by Bishop Deon Johnson of Missouri, to which both our bishop and the diocese are signatories. The task force is divided into three working groups:

Education: Advises the task force and the diocese on opportunities for learning about the history of racism and the Christian imperative to fight white supremacy. They vet and develop curricula for lay and ordained leadership of the diocese.

Policy: Advises the task force and the diocese on the ways that church policy and procedure have been used to promote white supremacy and works to develop anti-racist policies for parishes and the diocese.

Justice: Advises the task force and the diocese on the ongoing effects of structural racism in secular political and economic life. This group equips Episcopalians to fight for equality in our cities, state and nation, especially through elections and advocacy. They work with partners to address and eliminate economic marginalization.

​ For more information contact co-chairs Terrell Mann, terrellmann49@gmail.com, or the Reverend Patrick Funston, canon to the ordinary, apfunston@episcopal-ks.org