Becoming Beloved Community
Racial Justice and Healing at Grace Church
Through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, many of us at Grace Church have discerned a fresh commitment to the call for racial justice and healing. As Christ has sealed us through baptism to strive for justice and to respect the dignity of every human being, God calls us to recognize that the work of racial reconciliation must continue; it is work we all must do.
Our parish has decided to take more intentional, deliberate steps to grow our community of reconcilers, justice-makers, and healers. We are expanding our education and formation opportunities on racial justice and healing, and have fully embraced the broader Episcopal Church’s Becoming Beloved Community framework, represented by the labyrinth above, to follow Jesus into a more loving, liberating, life-giving relationship with God and with each other.
What is Becoming Beloved Community?
Becoming Beloved Community is the Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation and justice.
Called forth by General Convention Resolution C019, which acknowledged, “despite repeated efforts at anti-racism training as well as racial justice and racial reconciliation initiatives including the passage of more than 30 General Convention resolutions dating back to 1952, the abomination and sin of racism continue to plague our society and our Church at great cost to human life and human dignity…”
Becoming Beloved Community provides a positive, theologically and biblically based ideal around which Episcopalians may address racial injustice and grow. It is not so much a particular set of programs as it is an invitation to take up your cross and follow the loving, liberating, and life-giving way of Jesus toward racial reconciliation.
The labyrinth is used as a way to visualize this journey: the quadrants of (1) Proclaiming the Dream of a community in which all are loved, (2) Telling the Truth about racism, (3) Practicing the Way of love to build bridges and see Christ in all persons, and (4) Repairing the Breach where individuals, systems and institutions have been broken, will be explored. You may walk these quadrants many times, gaining new insights and identifying new challenges with each visit.
What Does Becoming Beloved Community Look Like at Grace Church?
As part of the journey towards Becoming Beloved Community, Grace has and will continue to:
- offer antiracist education and formation activities; (telling the truth)
- gather and distribute racial reconciliation resources; (telling the truth)
- highlight opportunities for action to confront and dismantle racism; (practicing the way & repairing the breach)
- measure our participation in these activities and be open to other transformative paths to which the Spirit leads us. (proclaiming the dream)
These initiatives include the following:
- Litany of Repentance for the Sin of Racism
- Visit from Missioner for Racial Justice & Healing
- Seek, Grow, and Share Speaker Series
- Racial Justice and Healing Book Dialogue Groups
- Grace and Race History Project
- Sacred Ground
- Self-Guided Black History Tours & Other Alexandria Resources
- Civil Discourse Training
VISIT BY THE DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA’S MISSIONER FOR RACIAL JUSTICE & HEALING, APRIL 2022.
The Reverend Doctor Lee Hill, Jr. gave an impassioned speech about Beloved Community, highlighting the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project., a city-wide effort to foster understanding about Alexandria’s history of racial terror and to work toward creating a community based in equity and inclusion. Alexandrians were invited to join in a pilgrimage in October 2022 to claim and install a copy of the two monuments representing the two known lynchings to have taken place in Alexandria, in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative.