At a recent Faith & Action Project presentation, Bryan Stevenson challenged the church on racial justice by saying, “This is not a moment for the church to be silent. This is a moment of crisis.” Too often in the past the church has stood by silently and watched injustice occur, justifying inaction and standing complicit by its failure to speak up. It must not do that again. This time demands that the church speaks out for those on the margins, takes up the cause of those who face injustice, and demonstrate what it claims to represent. This is in part what it means to widen the circle of God’s embrace with heart and voice.

CCC’s Vestry is taking the call to racial justice seriously and is establishing a Racial Justice Ministry Team. Your help, input and insights are needed to make this team a success. At a recent Vestry meeting the following Charter was established.

The Racial Justice Team at Christ Church Cathedral cultivates a courageous space for individuals in our congregation and beyond to live and walk together through holy discomfort, to create an environment for racial justice, healing, and repair, and to learn, listen, and grow into God’s beloved Community.

The Team’s primary functions are to:

•  Prepare the congregation for this work as work of the heart: helping us to build common language and understanding around this issue while confronting white-centeredness and white fragility. The group also helps the congregation to understand the connections between systemic racism, poverty, classism, and all other “isms.”
• Coordinate with the Diocesan Racial Justice and Education Team in hosting and promoting a regularly occurring training in dismantling systemic racism in the Diocese of Indianapolis. As the Cathedral, one of our calls is to offer hospitality for this training for people of our Diocese and our neighbors.
• Support and connect our congregation and neighborhood with a variety of both secular and religious efforts to dismantle racism, including training, book studies, discussion groups, calls to action, witnesses for justice, etc.
• Conduct, with the assistance of an outside consultant, if necessary, a Racial Justice Audit of Christ Church Cathedral’s systems, ministries, lay and clergy leadership, administrative structures, policies and procedures committees, and finances.

Michael Landon has been appointed as Chair of this new team, and he needs your help. There will be a first meeting of the Racial Justice Team on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Please contact Michael at revmlandon@gmail.com and he will send you the link. Also contact him if you are interested, but unable to attend the first meeting.