The Anti-Racism Commission's monthly newsletter goes out to all ARC supporters and training participants. Please forward it to others who might benefit from our resources and workshops. And check out our blog site for past articles, training information and ongoing resources. | |
Upcoming Anti-Racism Trainings | |
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Sat. Jun. 22, 2024 from 9 am to 12 pm on Zoom
Fee: $20. Scholarships are available, especially for postulants and candidates for ordination. Email arc@diopa.org.
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The Anti-Racism Commission's anti-racism training series is facilitated by Lailah Dunbar-Keeys and designed to help participants understand the historic creation, preservation, and personal and institutional effects of a society built upon ideas of racial difference, which in turn support an unjust, racially based hierarchy.
Anti-racism trainings are mandatory for clergy and open to all. Completion of all 5 trainings over 2 years meets the initial clergy requirement for anti-racism education. Email arc@diopa.org to obtain a certificate of completion. For more information, questions or concerns, please email arc@diopa.org.
Download, print, and share this flyer with anyone you think would be interested in anti-racism training.
If you have a mind and heart and the skill to facilitate, and if you have taken ARC's anti-racism trainings, please consider volunteering to be a breakout room facilitator for ARC's anti-racism trainings, which are on Saturday mornings on Zoom. Email arc@diopa.org to learn more.
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Around the Diocese of Pennsylvania | |
Becoming Beloved Community Grant | |
We are pleased to announce that ARC was awarded a Becoming Beloved Community IMPACT grant from the national church to expand a diocesan anti-racism program Telling Our Stories: Healing the Wounds of Racism, Becoming Beloved Community.
The Telling Our Stories series uses the improvisational art form playback theatre to foster racial storytelling and understanding in race-specific and mixed affinity groups. Each series features 3 interactive sessions of theater and discussion in which participants see themselves in one another’s stories of race and racism as they are brought to life on stage by members of Playback For Change, a Philadelphia-based theater company that facilitates racial understanding using playback theatre. In this approach, audience members’ real stories become the source material. The performance is spontaneous - it is theater created through a unique collaboration between performers and audience.
In 2023, ARC contracted with Playback For Change to develop the pilot, which drew more than 140 participants. The 3-part series used racial affinity groups for the first 2 sessions, and a mixed group for the third. Exploring Our Whiteness invited an all-White audience to share stories of learning, enacting and resisting racist beliefs and behaviors. Telling the Whole Story invited an audience of people who self-identify as Black, Brown, or a Person of Color to share stories of healing, community building, and honoring unique racial identities. Creating Common Cause invited an audience of all racial identities to share their stories of resisting and healing from racism.
Based on feedback from the pilot series, we are confident that this approach to storytelling brings people’s experiences of race and racism to life, uncovers common ground, and also makes unfamiliar stories accessible across racial lines in visceral and relatable ways. The race-specific affinity group model creates brave and supportive spaces for people of similar racial background to tell their stories and to draw courage from one another. The mixed group experience allows a diverse audience to listen across difference, look for the places that resonate, and find instances of common cause and understanding. Participants leave these experiences with relational skills that strengthen the ongoing work of anti-racism.
With this grant, ARC will offer 2 additional Telling Our Stories series over the next 3 years. Bringing Telling Our Stories to more audiences throughout the diocese would allow ARC to employ and deepen partnerships with parishes and deaneries, as well as local anti-racism groups, and would enable ARC to enrich the environment in which we do our anti-racism work, and to better understand and respond to the needs of communities across a larger geographical area.
Email arc@diopa.org if your parish or deanery would like to partner with ARC on the upcoming Telling Our Stories playback theatre workshop series.
|  | Photo: At Creating Common Cause on Sat. Nov. 18, 2023 at Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, audience members’ real stories of race and racism were brought to life on stage by members of Playback For Change, a Philadelphia-based theater company that facilitates racial understanding using playback theatre: co-director Sarah Halley, Kristen Bissinger, Burgandy Holiday, Christopher Ridenhour, and Tom Bissinger | The Anti-Racism Book Club at Holy Comforter in Drexel Hill | |
Tuesdays at 4 pm on Zoom
Free and open to all.
To join, email sperrone21@outlook.com.
| The Anti-Racism Book Club at Church of the Holy Comforter in Drexel Hill meets on Zoom every Tuesday at 4 pm. Through selected readings, experiences, and discussions, and with God’s help, book club members hope to come to terms with their own feelings of complicity and to find a responsible way to respond to what they have learned about the virulence of racism and the experience of other cultures in the United States. The Anti-Racism Book Club extends a warm welcome to readers outside of the Holy Comforter congregation who wish to learn and grow in community. If you're looking for regular engagement in discussion, dialogue, in-person activities, and fellowship, and would like to join the Anti-Racism Book Club, contact its coordinator Stephen Perrone (sperrone21@outlook.com). |
Ruth Naomi Floyd: Are We Yet Somehow Alive? | Ruth Naomi Floyd: Are We Yet Somehow Alive? at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral on Apr. 25, 2024 paired jazz, blues and gospel with fine art projections to share compelling first-person accounts from enslaved Africans in America. At the intersection of despair, endurance and resistance, these narratives explore what it means to be human amidst the struggle for liberation and dehumanization. | Read a review of the performance by Dr. Guthrie Ramsey, music historian, pianist, composer, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Memory, Muse, and Experimentation in Ruth Naomi Floyd's "Are We Yet Somehow Alive?" | |
Photo: On Apr. 25, 2024, hundreds attended Ruth Naomi Floyd: Are We Yet Somehow Alive? at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral | |
Photo: Vocalist Deion Peyton and Ruth Naomi Floyd in Are We Yet Somehow Alive? on Apr. 25, 2024 at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral | |
Tell Me the Truth About Racism | |
Photo: Workshop creators/facilitators The Rev. Will Bouvel and Jen Holt Enriquez shared Tell Me the Truth About Racism, their new anti-racism Episcopal curriculum for children designed to create awareness and healing about the inherited effects of racism, on Apr. 11, 2024 at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral | |
Monthly Gathering for Racial Justice Leaders | |
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Wed. Jul. 3 at 3 pm EST on Zoom
Free and open to all racial justice leaders in the Episcopal Church.
| | On the first Wednesday of each month, racial justice leaders from from the national offices of the Episcopal Church and from Episcopal dioceses across the United States will gather on Zoom to discuss pressing issues, exchange best practices, and illuminate the diverse ministries making an impact. This platform is not just a meeting, but a sanctuary for ideas, strategies, and mutual support. Save the date for future meetings: Aug. 7, Sep. 4, and Oct. 2. | |
Join the Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice | |
The Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice is a voluntary association of Episcopal dioceses, parishes, organizations, and individuals dedicated to the work of becoming the beloved community. All groups and individuals at every level of the church who faithfully engage in the work of truth-telling, reckoning, and healing for racial equity, justice, and the dismantling of White supremacy are invited to join the Episcopal Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice by completing an online questionnaire and signing on. Learn more. | |
Recommended by the National Museum of African American History and Culture |
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A Holistic Approach to Anti-Racism | |
Download, print, and share this flyer with anyone you think would be interested in ARC's virtual anti-racism training and racial healing circles, and in-person workshops like Singing the African American Spirituals with Integrity or ARC's playback theatre workshop series Telling Our Stories. | |
The Anti-Racism Commission was created by diocesan convention resolution in 2005 with the mandate “to affect the systemic and institutional transformation in the diocese away from the sin of racism and toward the fulfillment of the Gospel and the baptismal mandate to strive for justice and respect the dignity of all persons.” Consisting of 12 members, a mix of clergy and lay and persons of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, the commission aims to increase awareness of the history and legacy of racism in our country and to engage members of the diocese in dismantling its effects. To learn more about how ARC can help your parish engage in the work of racial justice and repair, contact The Rev. Barbara Ballenger (barbballenger@gmail.com) or The Rev. Ernie Galaz (frernie@christchurchmedia.org), ARC co-chairs. | | | | |
