Reparations Task Force Continues Work and Study with Definitions, Framework, and Witness

Formed in response to thoughtful discussion at Annual Conference 2022,
the Task Force will bring a report to the 2023 Annual Conference session

By Latoya Damon
 
The Reparations Taskforce gathered on March 10 and 11 at Central UMC in Atlanta to continue their discussion on actionable steps toward restoring our beloved communities through racial healing and reconciliation. Curtis Paul DeYoung, a co-facilitator of the taskforce and the co-author of Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism, reminded us that the directive of Christ to love our neighbors as we love ourselves serves as the template for how radical reconciliation can restore our communities after, despite, and beyond realities of oppression, exploitation, division, and alienation.
 
Part of the work of repair is overcoming communal quietism and naming our pain. In Troubling My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering Emilie Townes in conversation with Audre Lorde makes a distinction between pain and suffering. Lorde defines suffering as unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. Suffering as unnamed and unexamined hurt is an intensifying phenomenon which usually ends in cycles of oppression. The link between quietism and the intensification of suffering makes naming and defining injustice a vital step toward healing and repair.  For Townes suffering is rejected as outrage, however pain is an experience that is recognized, named, and then used for communal transformation.
 
The discourse between Townes and Lorde shines a light on the importance of framing and defining reparation in the North Georgia Conference.

The small group responsible for developing shared language around reparative justice finalized an operational definition of reparations and theological foundation informing the scope and function of the task force. Task Force member Pamela P. Carn defined reparations as “as acts of healing and repair rooted in the biblical call to repent with a contrite heart and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves."
 
Task force member Dr. Robert Foster presented a framework to counteract systemic racism in the church. It focuses on distinguishing the theological harm caused by systemic injustices from the political harm. He notes that if reparations are to become a matter of the church, then the problem must be theologically defined, the call to action must be congruent with the theology of the denomination, and the outcomes must advance United Methodist strivings toward a healed and beloved community in Christ.
 
Carn clarifies that contrition and neighborly love as the call to action specifically entails the admittance of harm and a declarative commitment to put in place programs and committees commissioned to repair the harm and racial injustices that the UMC participated in, benefited from, or perpetuated against communities of color to the determinant of its current and past members.
 
In conjunction with a shared language for doing reparations work in the North Georgia Conference the task force discussed the importance of moving toward a shared witness.
 
Ash McEuen, chair of the Hispanic and Latino Ministry Committee; Carol Allums Vice Chair of the Conference Committee on Religion and Race, and DuWanna Thomas former chair of Black Methodists for Church Renewal discussed strategies to move the United Methodist community toward a shared witness on issues of racial repair and reconciliation.
 
Thomas articulated the importance of resisting single-storied narratives that obscure the intercultural impact of racial harm and produces pockets of suffering among groups that are not normally centered in issues of racial harm or repair. 
 
McEuen added that single-storied narratives silence communities, who have a right to listen and participate in the unfolding narrative of racial repair—and more importantly whose stories add textures and layers of complexity to the problematics existing within cultures of supremacy and oppression. He specifically points to language injustices faced by Spanish-speaking and Korean-speaking congregations who may only have access to Christian liturgies, lectionaries, and some denominational resources in English. 
 
Allums points out that while white communities are seldomly identified as victims of racist agendas the community has nevertheless been harmed by institutional racism. She specifically recalled the communal harm experienced when Prince George County shut down all of its public schools rather than integrate them or when municipalities chose to shut down public pools and transportation services for similar reasons these efforts to keep communities of color at bay at all costs proved to be self-harming initiatives. While Allums articulated the belief that white communities have experienced less harm, Thomas speculates that although white communities appear to be the most protected groups within America’s system of racial oppression, this presumed protection obfuscates the harms experienced by the community and makes them vulnerable to unacknowledged spiritual and moral injuries.

Thomas concluded that we are all negatively impacted by the sin of systemic racism which permeates every American institution including The United Methodist Church, and as we move toward an authentic shared witness the community shifts from blaming and shaming to a burning urgency to collectively meet the challenges and problematics of systemic racism in ways that will produce a lasting change within our churches and society-at-large.   
 
Thomas noted that the social boundaries between the "harmed" and the "perpetrator of harm" prevents the emergence of an authentic shared witness to the gospel of Jesus and stifles the collective moan to dismantle institutional racism.
 
Read the first report of the reparations task force at "Task Force Begins Work, Study" and the second report at "Task Force Continues Work and Study"

—Latoya Damon is scrivener for the North Georgia Conference Reparations Task Force.