On Thursday October 1, leaders gathered from across the diocese to join for the first of three Becoming Beloved Community Teach-Ins this month. Beginning with HISTORY, the next two weeks will focus on STORIES and lastly, INVITATION.
Each week, different lay and clergy will present their wisdom and experience around Becoming Beloved Community. This week, Amy Howton, Becoming Beloved Community Coordinator shared the history of the Becoming Beloved Community strategic imperative of The Episcopal Church, placing it in context of the Church’s historical response to race and racism. She shared, for example, this timeline created as part of our diocesan engagement around truth-telling to examine what’s been done and left undone in terms of dismantling white supremacy.
Rev. Meribah Mansfield and Deborah Stokes-Wayne then shared how this vision began to come to life in our diocese, their personal experience in this work, and what it has meant to them, personally. They each spoke to the challenge before us in terms of bringing forth the beloved community in practice–for individuals and corporately.
One question that we kept returning to throughout was “what will make this time different?”. There was agreement that this responsibility is both on the institutional Church and on each of us. We are the Church.
Interested in joining for the next two Teach-In sessions, October 8 and 15 from 7-8:30? Contact ahowton@diosohio.org for details.
