Episcopal Diocese 

of Northern California

Beloved Community

Resource Newsletter

Published by

The Commission for

Intercultural Ministries

September 2022 

Episcopal Church Becoming Beloved Community

Newsletter Highlights:

• Farmworker Pilgrimage
• I Will, With God's Help: Journey Toward Racial Justice and Healing:

         Christ Episcopal Church, Eureka

• Funding Approved for Racial Justice Audit in The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California in 2023
• A Diocesan Resolution Addressing Climate Change
• Orange Shirt Day: September 30
• Diocesan Efforts Reinforce Tribal Largesse
• Upcoming Lectures on Land Stewardship and the Color of Labor
• SAVE THE DATE! Dr. Catherine Meeks to Speak at Trinity Cathedral in October
• Book Signing of The Abolitionist's Journal by The Rev. Jim Richardson
• Talking Through Political Divisions:  Having Hard Conversations with Compassion
• Contacts for California and US Senators and Representatives 2022

Happy National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month!

Little churches still matter, says Martha’s Vineyard pastor of church that took in migrants

Houses of worship on Martha's Vineyard have long worked together to meet the needs of their neighbors. So they were ready to spring into action when refugees arrived unexpectedly.

Religion News Service I Bob Smietana I Posted September 16, 2022

Immigrants gather with their belongings outside St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Wednesday Sept. 14, 2022, in Edgartown, Massachusetts.

Farmworker Pilgrimage

By The Rev. Grant Bakewell

St. Matthew's, Sacramento

"My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes…" - Isaiah 5, the “Song of the Vineyard” 

On Friday, August 26, almost 5,000 farmworkers and their supporters, including hundreds of pilgrims walking up to 335 miles from Delano, arrived at the State Capitol to ask for one thing: Governor Newsom’s signature on a bill (currently AB 2183) extending the voting rights–rights that every California voter now enjoys–to farmworker union elections. Although absentee, mail-in, and dropbox voting has been our public norm for decades, farmworker elections with respect to union representation have continuously been held at a farm, ranch, or workplace, often with little privacy or outside, impartial oversight. The result has been worker intimidation and threatened or actual deportation, for simply exercising a worker’s right to vote for or against union representation.

Pilgrims and marchers arriving.

Rev. Grant Bakewell with

St. Matthew’s Banner

Rev. Grant and

Kathy Bolen, Trinity Cathedral

Supporters in front of the Capitol.

Healthcare workers supporting the march.

Love God, Love Neighbor:  Advocacy in Action

Want to gain skills and tools for migrant advocacy?

September 21, 2022, 9 am PT

Church lauds success of Sacred Ground curriculum as new groups form to study history of racism

Episcopal News Service I David Paulsen I Posted September 15, 2022

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry gives opening remarks

for the Sept. 15 webinar on Sacred Ground.

The Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground curriculum, developed and launched in February 2019, has been a resounding success as measured by the widespread adoption of the curriculum as part of the church’s efforts to promote racial reconciliation and healing. Over 2,300 small discussion groups, or “circles,” have registered so far to facilitate the 10-part, film-based discussion series, and more are getting underway this fall.

On Sept. 15, participants in some of those Sacred Grounds circles and other Episcopalians interested in starting their own circles attended a webinar kicking off the latest round of Sacred Ground discussions. Over 1,300 people attended the webinar, underscoring the curriculum’s continued relevance and broad resonance across the church.

Keeping Track of Sacred Ground

Are you forming a Sacred Ground Circle? Let the Commission for Intercultural Ministries know by registering it here:

https://forms.gle/hriHCPKmLwjUHEyEA

Are you interested in joining a Sacred Ground Circle? Sign up here:

https://forms.gle/G26EPxDzEFSpnsZW7

The Episcopal Church is excited to share that there is currently an exciting new job open to lead and support churchwide racial justice, reconciliation and healing ministries. Please consider for yourself and also share with your networks.

Manager for Racial Justice and Reconciliation Ministries

The manager will serve as staff convener and manager for Episcopal Church work of racial reconciliation, justice and healing, guiding strategic efforts to inspire, mobilize, form, gather and celebrate Episcopalians engaged in the ministries of racial justice, healing and reconciliation. Aligned with the Church’s vision for Becoming Beloved Community, the manager will bring special focus to racial justice, public witness and action, truth-telling about our churches and race, and repairing the breach.

Location: Remote

Application Deadline: September 22, 2022

For more information, contact Rev. Melanie Mullen, Director of Reconciliation, Justice and Creation Care for The Episcopal Church at mmullen@episcopalchurch.org. 

I Will, With God's Help:  Journey Toward Racial Healing and Justice

Christ Episcopal Church, Eureka

The Rev. Dr. Daniel London, Rector, Christ Episcopal Church, with workshop co-facilitators

Jo Ann Williams, Miriam Casey and Bob Wohlsen.

Many thanks to The Rev. Dr. Daniel London and his staff for their gracious hospitality as they welcomed the diocesan racial healing workshop, “I Will, With God’s Help: Journey Toward Racial Healing and Justice” at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka on August 27.

There were 22 participants from all four of the churches in the Semper Virens Deanery. They opened their hearts and minds to the healing work ahead and engaged with the invitation to strive for justice in their communities.

The facilitators, Jo Ann Williams, Bob Wohlsen and Miriam Casey, highlighted the message of God’s love for us as well as our Baptismal promises to love our neighbors and to work for justice and peace. The Baptismal promises were linked to the long-term vision to strive for the Beloved Community, illustrated as a labyrinth. The participants were invited to learn the truth about racism, imagine how their communities would be if injustices created by racism didn’t exist, grow in their capacity to love, and begin to consider how they might engage with the local communities to begin to repair damage created by racism.

In his sermon, "The Guest House and the Banquet," Fr. Daniel preached about the information learned from the workshop and the resulting emotions experienced in the context of his own church's history. He spoke of the good work that Christ Church is doing in its outreach ministries, feeling challenged to do even more, and welcoming all into the banquet of the Beloved Community.  Thank you for your heartfelt and powerful message, Fr. Daniel! 

The US and the Holocaust Examines America's Response

A Story that Americans Have to Reckon With

A new documentary from Ken Burns and his colleagues premieres Sunday, September 18, on PBS. It is a different window into the Holocaust with a focus on the U.S. and raises troubling questions about this country's history and actions.  The U.S. and the Holocaust examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, immigration and eugenics in the United States, and race laws in the American south.  

Funding Approved for Racial Justice Audit

in The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California in 2023

The diocesan Board of Trustees approved funding for 2023 for the Racial Justice Audit introduced as Resolution R3-2021 which passed with a majority of votes at the Diocesan Convention last year. The Commission for Intercultural Ministries is charged with facilitating the audit and is grateful for the almost unanimous support of the resolution and is committed to the work of building Beloved Community in the diocese. 

The audit will be modeled on the churchwide Episcopal Church audit. It is anticipated that this work will take place over a 2-year period with the governing bodies at diocesan level audited during the first year with the hope that the Board of Trustees will approve funding for audits of congregations in the second year. 

The diocesan Racial Justice Audit team will meet later this month to discuss next steps and will be working with The Mission Institute, which administered The Episcopal Church's Racial Justice Audit, to administer the audit in the diocese. 

Contact Lynn Zender, zenderlynn@gmail.com, or Jo Ann Williams, 

bjwilli@surewest.net, Racial Justice Audit Co-Chairs, for questions about the audit.

A Diocesan Resolution Addressing Climate Change

By Matt Weiser

Commission on the Environment

When church leaders meet in Redding on October 21-22 for the Diocesan Convention, they will be asked to consider adopting a resolution dealing with nothing less than the fate of our planet: a climate change resolution. The resolution calls on individual Episcopal churches and other diocesan organizations to strive for carbon-neutral status in their operations by 2030. It sounds like a lot to ask, especially for small churches with limited resources. But the resolution has been carefully crafted to ensure success.

Season of Creation

The Season of Creation, September 1st through October 4th, is celebrated by Christians around the world as a time for renewing, repairing and restoring our relationship to God, one another, and all of creation. The Episcopal Church joins this international effort for prayer and action for climate justice and an end to environmental racism and ecological destruction. This year’s theme is Listen to the Voice of Creation. In celebrating the Season, we are invited to consider anew our ecological, economic, and political ways of living.

The Season of Creation may be a great opportunity to hold an outdoor worship service or ministry event. If you share about your Season of Creation activities on social media, please use the hashtags #Episcopal #SeasonofCreation.

On day of remembrance, churches confront their role in Indigenous boarding schools

Several US mainline denominations — including the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church — encouraged their members to observe a day of remembrance for US Indian boarding schools on Sept. 30.

Religion News Service I Emily McFarlan Miller I Posted September 30, 2021

Worshippers at a prayer service for truth and reconciliation late last month at St. Benedict Catholic Parish in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood prayed in English and in Ojibwe.

They prayed to the four directions, the smoke from a smoldering bundle of sage curling skyward in the church’s sanctuary. They prayed as each person made their way down the church’s center aisle to leave a pinch of tobacco — one of the four sacred medicines in many Native American cultures — in a shared bowl to be burned.

They prayed for healing, for forgiveness and for their eyes to be opened to injustices committed against Indigenous peoples by what was known as the federal Indian boarding school system in the United States.

Orange Shirt Day:  September 30

By The Rev. Canon Tina Campbell

Diocesan Indigenous Missioner

On September 30, people in the U.S. will observe the Remembrance Day of U.S. Boarding School Survivors or "Orange Shirt Day." 

The Episcopal Church was associated with Indigenous schools during the 19th and 20th centuries; and since we do not know the extent of the Church’s involvement, at General Convention last summer The Episcopal Church voted to establish a fact-finding commission to research its role in the federal Indian boarding schools.

The recent discovery of children’s remains at school sites in Canada and the US has helped catapult the actions of the federal Indian boarding school system to national attention.

Orange Shirt Day offers the chance to remember the children who survived their boarding school experience, learn about the families who experienced the removal of their children, and about the attempt to exterminate the culture of Indigenous people in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Here are two resources to learn more. One is the statement from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry about the schools and the other is from Native Americans in Philanthropy. I hope you will take the time to read these and learn more.

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/statement-on-indigenous-boarding-schools-by-presiding-bishop-michael-curry-and-president-of-the-house-of-deputies-gay-clark-jennings/

https://nativephilanthropy.org/2021/09/30/heres-what-you-can-do-to-honor-national-day-of-remembrance-for-u-s-indian-boarding-schools/

The Truth and Healing Commission on

Indian Boarding School Policies in the U.S. Act

(H.R.5444 and S.2907)

As part of our Church’s work on racial reconciliation, justice, and our commitment to truth-telling, we are dedicated to addressing the legacy of violence and abuse perpetrated by boarding schools, including our Church’s role in the kidnapping of Indigenous children from their families by participating in the boarding school system. The initial findings publicized in Volume 1 of the Department of the Interior (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs investigative report, make it clear that the federal government should further commit itself to reconciliation work regarding the boarding school policies. Congress must act urgently to pass the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act (H.R. 5444/S.2907).

Diocesan Efforts Reinforce Tribal Largesse

By Bo Simons, Vestry Member

Church of the Incarnation, Santa Rosa

Greg Sarris grew up an off-reservation, street-wise, at risk young Pomo man on the mean streets of south Santa Rosa in the 1950’s and 60’s. Today his novel, Grand Avenue, named for one of those mean streets, is taught in university classrooms throughout the country, and UCLA Professor Greg Sarris is the Tribal Chair of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR or Graton Rancheria), representing Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Native Peoples. Sarris announced September 1 that Graton Rancheria has given back in a huge way with 3.5 million dollars towards a new library in Roseland, the Santa Rosa neighborhood that desperately needs a library.

This gratifying news comes as a coda to the Diocese’s “Going Beyond Land Acknowledgment” (GBLA) seminars. Sarris’s announcement fueled the seminar attendees growing awareness that Natives have a keen sense of social justice and giving back to the community. Not only do tribal councils shower benefits on their tribe, they help everyone in the community. From day one, Sarris said the tribe always wanted “to benefit Indian and non-Indian people alike.”

Upcoming Lectures on Land Stewardship and the Color of Labor

Episcopal Church of St. Martin, Davis

The Episcopal Church of St. Martin in Davis invites you to join them for the following

Seeds of Justice: Year Two upcoming lectures. 

To register in advance for the Zoom meetings, please go to the following link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvcuihrzwrE9Dy3JAoW_nqotIB70phX1Ea.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Check the church website for additional details.

• Sunday, October 16, 2022, 4 pm on Zoom

Cultural Fire, Storytelling, and

Reclaiming Indigenous Land Stewardship Practices 

Melinda Adams (N’dee San Carlos Apache), PhD candidate in the Department of Native American Studies, UC Davis, and previous Tribal College Professor of Environmental Science at Haskell Indian Nations University

As temperatures rise and wildfire engulfs communities, scientists and academics search for long term solutions to the risk and extent of wildfire.  

In California, Native Americans are actively managing the effects of climate change and wildfire by reclaiming our land stewardship practices held since time immemorial. Cultural burns are an example of these practices and can aid in strengthening preventative measures of climate and wildfire effects. Through a Native perspective, this talk will centralize the significance of partnering with practitioners and cultural bearers to reclaim cultural fire land stewardship and cultural lessons. Equally important, this work discusses the need to reshape local California history by centering Wintun Peoples and the history of Native peoples in relationship to the landscapes and waterscapes of what is now “California” –as articulated through place-based storytelling and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. 

• Sunday, November 13, 2022, 4 pm on Zoom

How Manifest Destiny Changed the Color of Labor

John M. Liu, Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Asian American Studies and Sociology, UC Irvine

Manifest Destiny as a doctrine of white expansion ironically required the introduction of more people of color into the United States. The shortage of white labor on the Pacific Coast and Hawaii to build the region’s economy required the serial recruitment of labor from Asia between the 1850s to the 1930s. This was followed by the primary reliance on Mexican labor until the post-WWII period. Immigrant labor was crucial in the development of mining, transportation, industry, and agriculture. Exploitation of this labor laid not only the foundations of U.S. immigration law but also complicated the binary white/black racial classification, both locally and nationally.

SAVE THE DATE!

Dr. Catherine Meeks to Speak at Trinity Cathedral in October

Dr. Catherine Meeks, Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta, Georgia, is coming to Sacramento and will spend the weekend at Trinity Cathedral in Sacramento.

• Friday, October 28, 7 pm – Speaking in the Cathedral (a $20 donation is requested) with a reception to follow.

• Saturday, October 29 – Leading a morning training and educational session in the Cathedral’s Assembly Area.

• Sunday, October 30 – Preaching at the Cathedral’s 11 am service.

More details to come! Follow this link HOME | CFRH to find out more about Dr. Meeks and the Center. If you have any questions, please contact Susan Hotchkiss.

Book Signing of The Abolitionist's Journal

by The Rev. Jim Richardson

Monday, October 10, 2022, 6 pm

The Rev. Jim Richardson will be signing his new book, The Abolitionist's Journal, at Beers Books, 915 S Street, Sacramento, on Monday, October 10, at 6 pm. Fr. Jim was the Interim Dean of Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento, and former senior writer with The Sacramento Bee. He will discuss his book with Ginger Rutland, playwright and former Bee colleague.  

Over the course of more than 20 years, the author and his wife, Lori, retraced the steps of his ancestor, George Richardson (1824–1911), across 9 states, uncovering letters, diaries, and more memoirs hidden away. Their journey brought them to the brink of the racial divide in America, revealing his great-great-grandfather Richardson’s involvement in the Underground Railroad, serving as the chaplain to a Black Union regiment in the Civil War and founding a college in Texas for the formerly enslaved.  

In narrating this compelling life, The Abolitionist’s Journal explores the weight of the past as well the pull of one’s ancestral history. Fr. Jim raises questions about why this fervent commitment to the emancipation of African Americans was nearly forgotten by his family, exploring the racial attitudes in his upbringing and the ingrained racism that still plagues our nation today.

TILL

NPR I Bob Mondello I Posted September 6, 2022

The tragic story of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was abducted, tortured and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 becomes the story of a mother's lifelong quest for justice. Danielle Deadwyler plays Mamie Till-Mobley, whose insistence that her brutalized son — face swollen to unrecognizability — have an open casket drew international news coverage, started her on a life of activism and changed the course of the civil rights movement.

Release Date:

Friday, October 14, 2022 (Limited)

Friday, October 28, 2022 (Nationwide) 

Vote Your Voice:  In Georgia, grant will mobilize and educate Asian Americans about new voter supression law

Southern Poverty Law Center I Rhonda Sonneberg I Posted September 12, 2022

By all accounts, the 2020 presidential election demonstrated significant gains in political participation among the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

Nearly 60% of Americans of Asian descent voted in the 2020 election, up from about 49% in 2016. Among racial or ethnic groups in the U.S., that increase trailed only Pacific Islanders.

In Georgia, those voters contributed to a surge in turnout among voters of color.

But as the midterm elections approach, access to the ballot for many AAPI voters and other Georgians of color is in doubt following the 2021 passage of a sweeping voter suppression law known as SB 202. Among the law’s many new voting restrictions are limits on the use of mail-in ballots and absentee ballot drop boxes.

Talking Through Political Divisions:

Having Hard Conversations with Compassion

Facilitated by The Rev. Alex Leach

Saturday, November 5, 2022, 10 am – 4 pm, on Zoom

Another Election Day is approaching. Increasingly, this has become a day charged with heated conflict between neighbors, friends, and family. And in our increasingly politically polarized world, it is difficult to have conversations across those political divisions. To bridge these divides, the Commission for Intercultural Ministries will host a workshop on building communication skills that can help us have hard conversations with compassion and connection.

The Rev. Alex Leach has spent almost 10 years training, teaching, and coaching conflict navigation skills. Such skills help us listen to even the hardest messages, hear with the heart of Christ, and speak our honest truth with care so that our own message is heard rather than rejected because we have simply pushed the other person's buttons. 

Through this interactive workshop, participants will explore spiritual practices that help us stay rooted in Christ's love and build skills around listening and speaking. 

Register online at https://forms.gle/D6Q2tENHrqz6wo6F8.

The Commission is also planning to sponsor in-person conflict navigation workshops in 2023.

Questions may be directed by email to NorCalCIM@gmail.com or to Alex+ at apleac@gmail.com.

Contacts for California and US Senators and Representatives 2022

By Lynn Zender, Co-Chair, Commission for Intercultural Ministries

It is the perfect time of year to start lobbying your legislator! In the next few weeks, both here and in our diocesan E-News and other notifications, you will be hearing about pieces of legislation that are coming up that are important to our lives. The legislation may be about climate change, immigration, prison reform, Indian boarding schools, health care reform—and so many other issues we are facing today.

Please use the chart at the link below to make it easy for you to contact your legislator.  Together we can make a difference! Please save the chart and use it!!!

Office of Government Relations Resources for Encouraging Voting

At the link below are resources focused on advocacy including Episcopal Church policies, tips for communicating with your elected officials, voter engagement, the 2020 Census, and more!

Elections require clear processes that outline how to carry them out, certify them, and ensure a peaceful transition of power. These processes are central to ensuring elections reflect the will of voters, a requirement central to the function and values of American democracy. The attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election sought to take advantage of ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA), which itself was an attempt to address the previous lack of clarity around the logistics of carrying out and finalizing an election. General Convention recently passed a resolution urging reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887. 

As we seek to “remember those in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured” (Hebrews 13:3), we ask that you join our call to legislators to establish a commission to study solitary confinement and provide humane recommendations for its reduction and reformation.   

Earlier this year, the Biden administration outlined the dire consequences we would face if Congress fails to approve supplemental appropriations to allow the federal government to continue responding to the threat of COVID-19, both at home and abroad. Recently, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young confirmed that, due to Congress’s failure to approve supplemental COVID appropriations, the federal government has been forced to stop replenishing the national stockpile of at home-tests, which required the government to suspend sending free COVID tests to American households. The OMB Director also confirmed that our domestic testing capacity has been diminished as we face a potential fall COVID surge.

Zoonotic (animal-to-human) pathogens can bring new diseases into the human population, which can lead to outbreaks of pandemics and cause great harm, as we have seen with COVID-19 and monkeypox. These pathogens can be either bacterial, viral, or parasitic and they can spread to humans via food, water, or the environment. The spread of zoonotic diseases and their spillover events have become more frequent due to the increasing commercial trade of wildlife for human consumption, deforestation, and industrial agricultural growth. Currently, up to 75% of emerging infectious diseases worldwide are caused by zoonotic pathogens found in wild or domestic animals and they account for millions of deaths annually. According to an analysis from the World Health Organization, zoonotic outbreaks in Africa, for example, have increased by 63% from 2012 to 2022 compared to the previous decade.

The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California

Commission for Intercultural Ministries

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