Churches Overcoming Racism

[Anthony]

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/unity-mission-evangelism-and...

Exactly forty years after the Conference which laid the ground for the World Council of Churches Programme to Combat Racism, some fifty church leaders, activists and theologians working on issues related to racism and related forms of exclusion, will meet in the Dutch village of Doorn, municipality of Utrecht, to look at the forms and features of racism today and come up with action plans for the churches.

The participants from different parts of the world are united by their efforts to build inclusive churches and communities, to resist racist discrimination within their societies and to empower the excluded.

Analysis, theological reflection and building networks for common action will be the tools by which the conference seeks to promote inclusivity as theological and ethical responses to racism.

The beginning will be marked by a public Thanksgiving Service for the witness through the Programme to Combat Racism on Sunday, 14 June at the Maartenskerk in Doorn. The programme contributed to the struggles to end apartheid in South Africa and has inspired and supported indigenous people in different parts of the world, oppressed groups in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America, as well as the Dalit communities in India.

A message of commitment will be read out during the closing public worship service at the end of the conference.

The conference is organized by the WCC in cooperation with the Council of Churches in the Netherlands, the association of migrant churches in the Netherlands SKIN , the missionary and diaconal agency KerkinActie, the interchurch organization for development cooperation ICCO and the ecumenical advocacy group Oikos.

[Minister Robbin Swinger Otey]

Can't wait to hear what these conversations will provide.seeing how Sunday mornings are the most segregated days in the week. Still, 50 years later.

[Anthony]

Greetings, t.e.y.a bey

I think your right, some blacks prefer segregated churches, but it's mostly whites that prefer segregated Sundays.The deeper reasons for segregated worship are difficult to talk about, for many, and will never be spoke about in public or in the media, it's a lil' deeper than just blacks and whites interpreting the gospels differently. Have you ever heard of a black mob burning down a white church?. The burden to be honest with issues of race and religion is not black Americas burden. The only reason a black church would want to stay segregated are simple reasons music & preaching styles.
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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about this in 1963 with the words “we must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.”

Here's how segregated some of the churches are America, this article is from CNN.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/04/segregated.sundays/i...

(CNN) -- The Rev. Paul Earl Sheppard had recently become the senior pastor of a suburban church in California when a group of parishioners came to him with a disturbing personal question. They were worried because the racial makeup of their small church was changing. They warned Sheppard that the church's newest members would try to seize control because members of their race were inherently aggressive. What was he going to do if more of "them" tried to join their church? "One man asked me if I was prepared for a hostile takeover," says Sheppard, pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California. The nervous parishioners were African-American, and the church's newcomers were white. Sheppard says the experience demonstrated why racially integrated churches are difficult to create and even harder to sustain. Some blacks as well as whites prefer segregated Sundays, religious scholars and members of interracial churches say. Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation's churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of "United by Faith," a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.
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Yours truly,
Anthony Smith